Knowledge based economy, excellence, clusters and regional development from a systemic perspective: Relevant aspects for South Korea

Abstract

Many nations and regions are struggling to remain or to become competitive in the context of globalization. Analysing recent documents dealing with innovation and qualitative growth in the industrialized countries, among them the EU-Strategy 2020, one can find considerable congruity in structure and goals. Most countries try to reach, on the one hand, an inclusive innovation, which is based on education factors and policies directed towards small and medium sized enterprises. On the other hand, they try to reach an inclusive growth, usually based on employment factors and being environment friendly through CO2and energy consumption reduction. The classical mechanism of inclusion predominantly covers individuals or individual units, but not regions as such.