Innovation policies in Thailand: towards a system of innovation approach?

Abstract

The issue of the rationale for public intervention under the system of innovation (SI) perspective has recently received increasing attention from scholars and practitioners. However, with few exceptions, this literature has been based on the analysis of innovation policies and innovation systems in industrialized countries neglecting almost completely the specific policy dilemmas that arise from the weak and fragmented innovation systems that characterize developing countries. In the last few years, a growing number of developing countries have adopted the SI approach officially in their innovation policy. Yet, there has not been an adequate attempt to systematically analyze how (and if) this has been done in practice. This study attempts to shed some light on this issue by analyzing the innovation policy of Thailand. It suggests that while the innovation system approach might be officially adopted by a government, the practice follows old innovation paradigms and hardly addresses systemic problems.

Keywords:

• innovation policies
• public intervention
• systems of innovation
• Thailand

Notes

1. Indeed research conducted for the OECD countries (Mohnen 1966, c.f. Norgren and Hauckes 1999) has shown that the social rate of return of investments in R&D and Human Capital largely exceeds the private rate of return, therefore providing strong arguments for public intervention in the supply of R&D and the provision of human capital.

2. It is important to note that the absence of an optimum implies that there is no clear ‘gap’ that policy makers need to target as in the neoclassical theory. That is, policies cannot be objectively defined against a clear (and measurable) target.

3. One clear example of lock-in is the fossil energy. The productive system is so dependent on the fosile energy that it is preventing the expansion of new forms of energy (such as solar, eolic, etc).

4. The notion of market failures is associated to the existence of an optimum. Since the evolutionary theory and the systemic approach does not support the idea of an optimum but rather a miryad of systems performing in different ways, we prefer to talk about systemic problems instead of market failures.