Measuring the Regional Nexus of Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Toward an Improved Analytical Framework for Understanding the Emergence and Growth of High-Tech Clusters in Different National Contexts

This seminar addresses developing an analytical framework for a comparative study of the emergence and growth dynamics of regions of high tech industrial clusters in different national contexts. We review the empirical and theoretical literature on determinants of national and regional competitiveness in high tech industries. We conclude that, while innovation and entrepreneurship have both been given increasing attention in various international benchmarking studies in recent years, their interaction and joint effects on economic dynamism -- especially at the regional and specific industrial cluster level -- have not been well-investigated. Moreover, while the number of empirical studies of specific high-tech regions has increased, especially in the United States, the influence of different national contexts and international linkages has received inadequate attention. To address these gaps, we propose the development of conceptual measures and empirical benchmark indicators that focus specifically on the regional nexus of innovation and entrepreneurship, and identify possible secondary data sources and primary data collection methodology for deriving these indicators. Some preliminary benchmarking findings comparing a number of Asian nations/regions with Silicon Valley are presented.

Poh-Kam Wong is an associate professor at the Business School, National University of Singapore, where he directs the Centre for Management of Innovation and Technopreneurship. He obtained his BSc., MSc. and Ph.D. from MIT. His current research interests include management of technological innovation, S&T policy, and high tech entrepreneurship. His publications have appeared in, among others, Information Systems Research, International Journal of Technology Management, Journal of Asian Business, and Industry and Innovation, as well as chapters in books published by Stanford University Press, MIT Press, and Oxford University Press. He has consulted widely for international agencies, government agencies in Singapore, and high tech firms in Asia. He has co-founded three technology companies and currently serves on the advisory board or board of directors of several high tech start-ups in Singapore and Malaysia. He is an advisor to two VC funds and chairman of the Business Angel Network (South East Asia). He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley in 1984 and is currently on sabbatical leave as a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC.