National Innovation Systems: The Cases of Singapore and Finland

In an increasingly borderless world, a good deal of interest is still devoted to the performance of countries. The attention paid to various measures of international competitiveness of countries is a witness to this. According to conventional wisdom, countries can gain through engaging themselves in the international division of labour, specialising in goods they can produce relatively cheaply. While this is still part of the truth, it is today of course too narrow a view. Although much international exchange is still based on traditional comparative advantages - which emanate from different relative endowments of factors of production - the relative success of nations in terms of sustainable growth is increasingly dependent on competitive advantage based on their ability to innovate. This implies much more than just coming up with new technologies, products or production processes. There must also be capability to utilize and commercialize them. Thus, management and marketing knowledge must be there, as well as suitable financial channels. It may even be maintained that ability to adapt existing technical knowhow to new applications and to take it all the way to marketable products is at least as important as technical progress in itself. However, even this may not suffice. There also has to be an entrepreneurial drive that contributes the dynamism required.