Increasing Opportunity and Value in the Cultural Industries: A Comparative Analysis of the Successful Clusters and Implications for Hallyu

Despite the growing digitalization and globalization, the industrial map of the world remains to display high-level concentration of resources and productivity in certain geographical locations called clusters. These locations such as Silicon Valley and Hollywood continue to attract entrepreneurs and large firms, enjoying strong sustainability and competitiveness. As the agglomerate of diverse entities and institutions, clusters play a significant role for improving the overall growth of the industry. This is more evident in the cultural industries where the relatively high unpredictability, expanding scale of investments, and the importance of physical location for consuming cultural contents require firms and participants to cooperate in proximity. In order to examine the importance of clusters in the cultural industries, this study first conducts a theoretical review on the role of clusters in this industry. Then, the paper analyzes the historically meaningful cultural clusters, Italy during the Renaissance and the US Hollywood of modern times, by evaluating the role of four interactive factors: firm, people, education, and government. The analysis of these two cases reveals that the  interactions among the four factors significantly influence the scale and competitiveness of cultural clusters. Ultimately, the paper provides some important options for further development of the Korean wave or Hallyu by utilizing the cluster strategy

Korean multinationals show solid recovery after global crisis

The Institute of International Affairs of the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS) at Seoul National University in Seoul, and the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC) at Columbia University in New York, are releasing the first annual report on leading Korean multinationals. The research for this report was conducted in 2010 and covers the period 2007 to 2009

An Interdisciplinary Approach of Culture and Business Competitiveness to the Analysis of Western and East Asian Models

Culture is becoming increasingly important in determining the competitiveness of firms in international business. Perlmutter first presented variables that focused on the primary attitudes among international executives, allowing an understanding of how cultural aspects affect the success and failure of a multinational corporation. Other scholars proposed various models of fundamental dimensions of culture. Among them, the Hofstede model is the most popular one. Almost all of studies on culture published in major business journals are based on this Hofstede model. However, the Hofstede model has some weaknesses, so studies on this model often produce conflicting results. The main goal of this paper is to develop a new cultural model, by correcting the problems of the Hofstede model, to identify East Asian dimensions of culture, and to give strategic for East Asian business.culture, Hofstede, OUI model, competitiveness, East Asia

Competitiveness of the Internet Industry in Korea and Japan: Case Studies of Korea Telecom Freetel and NTT DoCoMo

Koreas well-developed mobile telephony network infrastructure makes it a globally competitive country in the field of wireless Internet. Korea Telecom Freetel has enjoyed the early-mover advantage in the wireless Internet industry in Korea, although it was a late-comer in the mobile telephony industry. The competition, however, is becoming harsher than ever, and the company is now seeking a breakthrough. For benchmarking, Japans NIT DoCoMo was chosen for its tremendous success in the worlds first commercialization of the wireless Internet. Using the diamond model (Porter 1990; Moon, Rugman and Verbeke 1998), the variables are analyzed and strategic recommendations are provided. One important conclusion is that Korea Telecom Freetel is taking advantage of its Esbusiness implementation, but can be more competitive if its business environment is less restrictive. The results of this research will help policymakers as well as business people in making decisions to enhance the competitiveness of the Internet industry

Accumulated and Accumulable Cultures: The Case of Public and Private Initiatives toward K-Pop

When it comes to the promotion of culture, many tend to highlight the vital role of public initiatives. This idea is based on the common perception that culture is part of the nationstate. This belief also stems from the confusion between two types of culture. To address such misperceptions, this paper emphasizes a distinction between accumulated and accumulable cultures: The former is associated with the nation-state and local conditions. Given that it has formed over a long period of time with the accumulation of related cultural practices, the need to protect it is strong. On the other hand, accumulable culture is less associated with the nation-state and is more universalistic. As it has only formed relatively recently, it can be further improved and enhanced. Alongside this, it should be well understood that accumulated culture was also once accumulable and has survived over time. Furthermore, this paper argues that in order to promote accumulable culture, private initiatives would have a more significant impact than public efforts. For example, the role of the Korean government has usually been credited by several media outlets and scholars in explaining the emergence of K-pop; however, a rigorous analysis of K-pop clearly demonstrates that private initiatives have actually been more effective in promoting K-pop internationally. This perspective intends to provide important implications for policy makers to formulate more effective policies that would help promote their national culture as a source of soft power

Re-interpreting Ownership Advantages and Re-categorizing Investment Motivations of Multinational Corporations: From the Perspective of Imbalance Theory

As opposed to the conventional type of asset exploitation-based foreign direct investment (FDI), this paper illustrates why firms invest abroad based on Moon and Roehls (2001) imbalance theory. Firms invest to complement their disadvantages and enhance their position in international business. Thus, by extending the imbalance theory, this paper shifts our focus on sources of competitiveness from monopolistic asset to complementing capability for firms disadvantages. The complementary capability can be categorized into four, which are agility, benchmarking, convergence and dedication. Based on the perspectives of both exploiting advantages and complementing disadvantages, this paper re-categorizes FDI motivations to factor seeking, demand seeking, related-and-supporting-sector seeking and business context seeking

National Competitiveness: Implications for Different Groups and Strategies

Several reports on national competitiveness already exists, but they are not satisfactory. This paper corrects the problems of the existing reports and suggests new methodologies of explaining national competitiveness. When comparing national competitiveness, nations should be grouped with regard to similarities in terms of economic scale and structure. For this purpose, this paper introduces 3x3 typology of country groups in terms of the nation's size and competitiveness. In addition, this paper applies the classical generic strategies to the national level. Combining these two analytical frameworks, this paper demonstrates several useful policy implications for different levels of national competitiveness

Cultural Impact on National Competitiveness

Culture has become an essential factor in understanding different economic and business environments. The influence culture has on people and society has been studied, defined and categorized by scholars through various models. The framework of five cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede is the most popular cultural model, but problems still exist regarding its accuracy. In this paper, the five dimensions have been revised into three dimensions -Individualism, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Openness - and have been applied in an empirical study with a country-based perspective. Through this new cultural model, companies and governments can get a better understanding of culture and its relationship to national competitiveness and the business environment

An Extension of Porter and Kramers Creating Shared Value (CSV): Reorienting Strategies and Seeking International Cooperation

This paper improves the theory of creating shared value (CSV), a new way to achieve economic success, which was introduced by Porter and Kramer. First, this study provides four types of corporations (Stupid Corporation, Selfish Corporation, Good Corporation, and Smart Corporation) categorized in terms of corporate and social benefits, and shows that the final destination for corporations is to be smart, meaning the ethics and strategy as the firms basic measures to bolster value creation. Second, this paper provides four distinctive strategies in order to effectively create shared value, an extended version of three strategies presented by Porter and Kramer: defining core competence; reconceiving comprehensive targets; redefining productivity in the value chain; and enabling local or global cluster development. Defining core competence is newly added and reconceiving comprehensive targets is extended from Porter and Kramers notion of reconceiving products and markets. Above all, this paper highlights the importance of internationalization of CSV, unlike Porter and Kramers emphasis on domestic clusters. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of these improvements in explaining CSV activities in the real world