Measuring systemic failures in innovation systems in developing countries using innovation survey data: The case of Thailand

Abstract

Despite the prior efforts defining what systemic problems are, no attempt has been done hitherto –to our knowledge– to empirically identify what the systemic problems of a specific system of innovation are. This paper aims at contributing to filling this gap by analysing the systemic problems of the Thai innovation system. For doing so, we use data from the Thai innovation survey in 2003 that seemingly allows a sufficient time lag for our analysis to identify systemic problems after a major transition initiated in 2001from a traditional research policy (pre-Thaksin dministration) to a more explicit innovation system policy (Thaksin era). The Thai innovation survey has a particular advantage as it contains several detailed questions related to the issue (such as on institutional supports and innovation environment not available in the traditional European community Innovation Surveys or CISs) that allow researchers to identify different systemic problems. We employ a hierarchical factor analysis in measuring institutional, infrastructure, capability and network problems and link them to the prior change in innovation policy in order to understand how and why such problems may have come about and existed.

Paper organization: Section 2 - the implications of the adoption of the IS approach for innovation policy and introduce the different systemic problems discussed in the literature. In Section 3- a general account of the Thai innovation survey, describe the dataset and the questions selected to capture each systemic factor. Section 4 - some descriptive evidence, present our hierarchical (two-stage) factor analysis and discuss it in the light of the recent transformation of the Thai innovation system and innovation policy. The paper is rounded up with some conclusions and suggestions for further research.