This chapter reviews the literature on the political economy of S&T and innovation, including the evolution from the national innovation system to a political economic approach, and proposes a conceptual framework to open the “black box” of the states role in S&T and innovation activities.

This chapter analyzes the public research system and policies implemented in South Africa to promote innovation and economic development. In addition to public research organizations and state-owned enterprises, the government research and innovation infrastructure is supplemented with private sector research, regulatory bodies, industry associations, and the South African Patent Office in South Africa. The chapter describes South African policies that have been introduced to support the supply of public research, consisting of the outputs of public research organizations, policies to support the innovative capabilities of firms, and policies to support linkages and knowledge transfer between public research and firms. Four case studies based on desk research and interviews show that the main channels for knowledge transfer in South Africa are informal methods and research agreements. The chapter concludes that a number of factors have limited the flow of knowledge from public research to businesses in South Africa and action is required to improve the demand for university research and increase the domestic capability to absorb and learn how to use technologies associated with new investment and modernization.

The main aim of this research is to explore the progress of the knowledge transfer system in the Republic of Korea and assess how much of this generated knowledge had been successfully commercialized. The chapter reviews policy changes since 2000 that were implemented to improve knowledge transfer from public research institutes. It identifies the important knowledge transfer channels in the Republic of Korea and reviews the challenges that government policy and public research institutes face in achieving successful knowledge transfer. The chapter concludes that for the national innovation system in the Republic of Korea to change from the old catch-up mode characterized by the twin dominance of big businesses and the government, the Korean system would need to support demand-oriented research, provide monetary incentives for researchers in terms of license income, place more weight on knowledge transfer performance in performance evaluation of researchers, and recruit high-quality personnel for knowledge transfer offices.