Germany and Korea have much in common: politically, they share the experience of partition; economically, they both have a strong orientation towards export and are faced with a constant pressure to innovate in order to sustain growth and highly-paid employment. Korea is the third most important market in Asia for German firms. In terms of the gross domestic product (GDP), Korea is the world's thirteenth-largest economy. Among the EU Member States, Germany has remained Korea's most important trade partner so far.
Thus, it is no surprise that German SMEs show an increased interest in starting business with Korean partners, e.g. for exporting purposes and also as peer partners in order to adapt existing products and goods to the Korean market requirements. Furthermore, Korea is seen as the ideal hub for entering the Asian market.
There are many enablers related to bilateral cooperation between Germany and Korea. Prevailing success factors for German SMEs that are already engaged in cooperation with Korea are for example the performance and quality of the products and technologies to be placed on the Korean market and especially the easy access to Korean networks / clusters.
The above mentioned facts are the outcome of a recently finished study on the comparison of clusters in Germany and Korea. Clusters are well known as suitable tool to facilitate international cooperation, especially for SMEs. Therefore, the key questions in the study were: How are Korean clusters structured and governed? Are Korean cluster managers appropriate counter-partners for German cluster managers to jointly initiate R&D-oriented cooperation among SMEs?
The study analysed the Korean cluster landscape and benchmarked the experience and objectives as regards to international cooperation. In total, about 40 German and Korean clusters are included in this survey.
In Korea, until today, about 60 so-called mini-clusters have been initiated and labelled by a top-down approach. Due to this state-driven implementation, structures, objectives and working methods of all 60 mini-clusters in Korea are very similar. In contrast to that, German clusters show greater variance. Generally, two key types of clusters can be distinguished in Germany. On the one hand, there are so-called bottom-up clusters which are industry driven and have no significant political control. On the other hand, there are so-called top-down clusters which are initiated and controlled by politics. Clusters of both types can be very successful.
The findings of the study provided input for the Federal Ministry for Education and Research and enabled it to set up appropriate programme design features for the first German-Korean pilot call on clusters recently launched by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research.
More information concerning similarities and differences between German and Korean clusters are given in the English summary. The complete report (in German) can be obtained from Dr. Gerd Meier zu Köcker (mzk@vdivde-it.de).
Gerd Meier zu Köcker, Liane Garnatz and Helmut Kergel
14 June 2010
