Industrial development and the dynamics of innovation in Hong Kong

This paper analyses the nature of industrial and technological development in Hong Kong in order to tease out the modes of innovation that existed in this Asian Newly Industrialised Economy (ANIE) since the 1950s to the present. The mode of innovation in Hong Kong from the early 1950s to mid-1990s was systemic in nature and that it conforms to a variant of the national innovation system (NIS). Embedded in the export-led industrialisation of Hong Kong is a framework of innovation that is different from the other ANIEs - South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Since the mid-1990s, and especially after the handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997, Hong Kong's innovation system has been more interactive and horizontal, which has some family resemblance to the 'Triple Helix' government-industry-university system, which is a stylised version of NIS. The new innovation system is dynamic and appears to have been driven by an apparent objective of steering Hong Kong in the direction of an innovation-driven economy.