Learning from Boston Cluster for innovation

The presidential office of Yoon Suk Yeol has delivered a good news from Washington. It announced Wednesday that Corning Incorporated, a multinational technology company based in the U.S., has decided to invest $1.5 billion in Korea. The presidential office said that the total amount of investments the president draw for two days in his seven-day state visit to the United States reached $5.9 billion, including Netflex’s pledge of $2.5 billion the previous day and other six U.S. companies’ promise of $1.9 billion in investment the following day.

We welcome President Yoon’s remarkable economic achievements from his first state visit to America. We hope the president reflects what he saw from the frontiers of innovation in running the country after returning home. His trip to Boston on Friday carries special meaning, as he meets with professors from MIT to have face-to-face dialogue with renowned scholars on digital biology. The president is scheduled to make a speech at Harvard University, too.

Boston has emerged as the global hub of bio revolution in the 21st century. The so-called Boston Cluster crammed with bio industry leaders and start-ups, including Moderna famous for its Covid-19 vaccine, represents a symbiotic ecosystem for innovation in the cutting-edge industry. The secret to the success is an integrated habitat for growth among the industry, universities, and research institutes in the city.

Research results from academia are fast transferred to start-ups, followed by venture capitals and other investors looking for top-caliber scholars in the field. The cluster is a crosspoint of MIT’s engineering skills and Harvard’s medical knowledge. Thanks to the merits, the cluster accounts for approximately 10 percent of the pipeline for new drugs around the globe.

Korea does not fall behind other countries when it comes to investment in research and development (R&D). The country is ranked first or second in the R&D to GDP ratio, and the size of its R&D investment is placed 5th in the world. But such numerical growth did not directly translate into finding new growth engines, due to a critical mismatch of investment and performance.

Korea faces limits to the growth of its mainstay industry like semiconductors. The only solution to break out of this logjam is to devise a new growth engine through innovations. V. Narry Kim, a world-renowned RNA biology professor from Seoul National University, has expressed regret about a lack of a habitat for innovation and ventures as in Boston even though the level of Korea’s RNA research is among the best. She urged policymakers to recognize the urgency of creating the environment for innovation to take off. We hope President Yoon learns from Boston Cluster to upgrade the lackluster habitat for start-ups back home.