International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2011

This article is a case study of one of the most successful multinational corporations in the global packaged food industry, Nong Shim Co. Ltd. By focusing on its phenomenal global business expansion starting from the 1990s, this article unravels internal mechanisms of innovation and knowledge management within the phenomenally successful instant noodle company. The study specifically focuses on the development of Shin Ramyeon, the sole product that saved Nong Shim from an imminent bankruptcy in the 1970s to Korea's largest instant noodle company by the late 1980s. Shin Ramyeon is now sold in 70 countries and locally produced in Korea, the United States and China. The article finds that the success of Shin Ramyeon was possible due to Nong Shim's persistent commitment to R&D and its global strategy based on the famous catch phrase 'one Korean flavour' for the entire global market. This article documents and analyses the process of developing this strategy and putting it into practice.

The recent history of scientific excellence of a society could be used as an indicator of its economic, cultural and communal prosperity. In this work, two examples of countries that successfully arose from the remnants of comparative poverty and established themselves as scientifically thriving societies, South Korea and Slovenia, are compared with the case of Serbia, a country that is presumably on the doorsteps of a similarly explosive developmental path. Guidelines for social progress in the direction of greater scientific and social prominence are outlined in the course of the discourse. It is concluded that the ideal model of growth is to be based on parallel progress on the plane of R&D policies and on the level of excellence of scientific and basic education. The 'leapfrog' approach which dictates that the less developed countries should learn from the mistakes committed by the developed ones and thus accelerate their progress and catch up with the latter is invoked as an essential systemic strategy to be adopted. Incorporation into global scientific network of cooperation is also outlined as a necessity as much as stable and thriving local scientific and technological bases that would make up for prolific grounds for an efficient transfer and implementation of knowledge.

This article is a study about international scientific collaboration, specifically as it relates to the biotechnology sector in Korea. The Korean biotechnology sector is compared to other major centres for biotechnology in the world, and we give recommendations to improve it. The importance of international collaboration is stressed. This article lists the different types of international collaboration, and the current trends in the international scientific community. Then the focus is narrowed specifically to the biotechnology sector, where collaboration is examined in greater detail. Trends in the United States and the European Union are examined to give a greater context to the discussion. Within this comprehensive frame of reference, Korean biotechnology achievements are discussed, problems observed in Korean biotechnology are listed and possible solutions to these problems are given.

Though the amount of research on corporate governance in the United States, Europe and Korea is enormous, most of them focus on the individual components of corporate governance, rather than the corporate governance as an organized system. This article, however, mainly focuses on the operational aspects of corporate governance, especially for operational innovation, which have often been ignored by most researchers. In this article, corporate activities such as governing activities, managing activities and investing activities are understood as an organized one, whether explicit or implicit, and these three types of activities are clearly distinguished from each other. Then, the existing systems of corporate governance are reexamined, and vague terms such as the board of directors, the management and the shareholders/stakeholders are replaced by the more appropriate terms of the governance structure, the management structure and the ownership structure. Using such terms, the circulatory system of corporate activities and three operating rules for this circulatory system are introduced. Hopefully, such efforts will eventually lead to developing an operational model of corporate governance for more practical governance innovations.