A Case Study of the Korean Government’s Preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Public Program to Support Business Model Innovation

Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution caused by innovative technologies is an irresistible megatrend, and many companies, institutions, and major countries are making efforts to participate. The World Economic Forum took the lead in discussing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, adding the issue to its 2016 agenda, and found that many governments, including that of Korea, were concerned about how to support their nation’s participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and were pursuing programs to support such efforts. In this study, we describe one of those programs, the Korean government’s Flagship Project Support Program (FPSP), which supports latecomers in creating open platforms and creating new business ideas in innovative technological industries. The program helps businesses overcome entry barriers to existing business ecosystems established by big technological players in growing fields such as smart cars, the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR), etc. The purpose of this study is to determine whether latecomers and small- and medium-sized companies that are experiencing difficulties in their own innovation can succeed in innovation through the Korean government’s FPSP. This study performed a comprehensive and qualitative analysis based on the Logic Model Framework consisting of an investigation of business ecosystems before and after the FPSP, assessment of outcomes, and evaluation of the effectiveness of the FPSP. This study shows that open platforms resulting from the FPSP successfully innovated business models in Korea. Our study, therefore, has implications for other governments seeking to play a role in supporting the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Priority of Factors of Building Government as a Platform with Analytic Hierarchy Process Analysis

“…Van Alstyne et al also showed how to platform business can overwhelm traditional business "pipeline." Yang et al mentioned that platforms that disrupt existing industry structures can create new markets, new demand, new supply, and unique value [24].…”

A confluência das tecnologias I.4.0 e novos modelos de negócio: uma revisão sistemática de literatura

“…This observation corroborates the research of Müller et al (2021), which notes that I4.0 is, often, considered by SMEs a way to improve efficiency but not to create other BMs. This makes it necessary for the Government to implement support policies to provide information on best practices, financial resources, access to an intersectoral and regional network of specialized partners (Yang, Kim, & Yim, 2019). Safar et al (2018) propose a BM for SMEs with a perspective to implement a platform introducing IoT in the firm in order to create the smart environment communicating clients, suppliers, banks, insurance providers (including authorities such as financial authorities in order to connect the already standardized software, and to store masses of data in the cloud).…”

Sustainable and Dynamic Competitiveness towards Technological Leadership of Industry 4.0: Implications for East African Community

“…Innovations are essential for successful entry into the era of industry 4.0, and many governments try to promote innovation. However, corporate leaders of companies cannot easily determine innovative initiatives, as they are time consuming, costly, and likely to fail, which is dubbed as a "leadership gap" in an organization [280,281]. erefore, joining or being part of already established innovative initiatives is the option for the companies to benefit and sustain their competitiveness in the current dynamic business environment.…”