An analysis on system failure mechanism of sectoral systems of innovation (SIS)

Abstract

Although the volume of mobile internet services has increased continually over the years, the rapid diffusion has still fallen short of expected quality. This paper considers mobile internet service industry in Korea as a system failure due to structural problems and attempts to identify systemic imperfection mechanisms from the supply side. Existing researches on mobile internet service industry have identified main factors to promote industry. However there are few literatures focusing on why and how the main factors interact with each other. The sectoral systems of innovation (SIS) and system failure approach, as analytical models for case, are selected to understand interaction among main factors such as technology, actors and institution already identified in the literature. The problems of mobile internet industry in Korea are categorized into interaction failures, institutional failures and capabilities failures which contribute to system failure and at the same time, failure types are linked to each other. Although the policy and institutions such as ``open network`` and ``mobile platform standardization`` have been adapted to promote mobile internet industry, these are not working effectively due to little understanding about the linkages among institutions. Furthermore, few institutions for contents providers have capabilities failure. Finally, this paper may contribute to policy making process for industry revitalization by analyzing structural failure mechanisms and building emerging sector innovation through case study.