| Abstract |
Governments are targeting biotechnology as a key growth industry. During the mid-1990s, many Continental European governments introduced policies to hasten the formation of biotechnology industries, with only modest success. In recent years many Asian countries have introduced aggressive biotechnology policies. Can Asian governments learn from the European experience? Sector-specific policies must be placed in the context of pre-existing national institutional frameworks: those in liberal market economies, as in the United States or United Kingdom, encourage the entrepreneurial companies commonly found within the biotechnology industry, while in more organised or co-ordinated economies, institutions are incompatible with the funding or organisation of entrepreneurial technology firms. Germany's 'organised' economy has been unable to develop a sustainable biotechnology industry, despite intensive government funding. Several Asian economies, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, have introduced policies bearing striking parallels with those developed previously in Germany. The success of public policy towards biotechnology will be strongly determined by the broader orientation of institutional frameworks in each economy. While Taiwan's economy may be evolving towards an orientation that may support biotechnology, Japan and South Korea each have strong national institutional elements with the 'organised' model, and may come to share similar problems in creating a sustainable industry. Asian Business & Management (2009) 8, 363-394. doi: 10.1057/abm.2009.13 |