The reproduction of 'government dependency' and high-tech start-ups in Daedeok, South Korea.

This thesis focuses on exploring the behaviours of high-tech start-upfinns in response to the policy interventions undertaken to promote regional innovation in South Korea since 1997. High-tech start-ups and their technological entrepreneurship are increasingly considered by policy makers and academics to playa crucial role in the generation of . innovation and economic development. However, this study started from a basic concern of why government intervention does not necessarily result in an increase of regional innovation capacity. To explain this concern, which comes from the researcher's personal observation in the field, this thesis attempts to construct a new conceptual framework of 'government dependency' and to apply this to 'Daedeok', a region in South Korea, to explore the reproduction of this kind of dep{ndency. This conceptual framework was developed by remodeling path dependency theories through a systemic and interactive lens. The empirical study used secondary data analysis and qualitative interviews of start-up founders to delineate the emergence of a new development path and the extent to which dependency was reproduced in the Daedeok regional innovation system. The research findings from this empirical study reveal that the perception of risk held by founders of start-up finns was lowered by a belief in their technology and the government's risk sharing policy. Such perceptions generated a regional development path of policy reliance in the case region. The emergence of this path gained momentum due to its practical benefits to business. As a consequence, policy reliance was connected to behavioural persistence of benefit-seeking. Empirical analysis suggested that 'reliance' and 'persistence' were the crucial factors in the production and reproduction of the government dependency. Some firms accepted dependency as reliance, but others regarded it as policy utilization. Thus, a critical juncture could not be clearly identified in actors' behaviour. It was also unclear if dependency had hindered innovation, but it was shown that the regional and institutional contexts strongly influenced the reproduction process. The thesis concludes that the construct of government dependency can also provide useful insights into policy learning as well as the Success of government interventions.