[Insight & Opinion] A Nation Reluctant to Embrace Innovation

If Innovation Is Not Embraced at Home,
Innovators Will Take Their Technologies Abroad
Concerns Rise Over the Outflow of Top Talent

In the mid-1980s, I set foot in Boston, USA for the first time to negotiate with a computer company. In the 1970s and 1980s, various computers emerged with different design philosophies due to the advancement of microprocessors. Operating systems (OS) also evolved from the legacy systems of mainframe computers to ones tailored by each company according to their own design philosophies. In the western Silicon Valley, there were computer companies like HP, Sun, Tandem, and Apple, while in the eastern Boston area, companies such as DEC, Wang, Prime, and Stratus operated. The support from prestigious innovative universities in both regions must have been a great driving force.

The independent design of hardware or operating systems is all a product of creativity. Bill Gates, a 20-year-old Harvard dropout, started his business by supplying the MS-DOS operating system to IBM and quickly became a billionaire. Later, the office software he created became compatible with IBM PCs and began to dominate office desks. Similarly, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both in their twenties, created Apple personal computers and became millionaires. Apple also introduced the Macintosh computer with a mouse for the first time in 1984.

When I first visited the company in Boston, what surprised me the most was a display on the wall introducing their first customer who purchased the computer they developed. The contract was made before the product was even shipped, based solely on the design architecture. The customer decided to be the first to use it because the design reflected the essential functions they needed, giving them an edge over competitors.

At that time, what struck me was whether such a contract would be possible in our case. Even now, I think it would have been difficult for a giant company like IBM to adopt an OS made by a 20-year-old, and it’s hard to imagine a personal computer made by a young novice in their mid-twenties selling like hotcakes.

There have been changes in the computing environment every decade, such as the commercialization of Unix in the 1980s, Linux in the early 1990s, and the emergence of Cloud in the 2000s. However, IT managers in Korea have been passive in accepting these changes. From my observation, there seems to be a delay of more than ten years each time. The emergence of new systems surely has many advantages, but whether due to skepticism, avoidance of responsibility, or lack of adventurous spirit, they fail to embrace these changes.

It is impossible to measure how much wealth a society that embraces innovation creates for a country. Even without considering the billions earned by Apple and Microsoft worldwide over decades, the current market capitalization of these two companies alone approaches approximately 7,000 trillion won. This is a staggering 17 times the market capitalization of Samsung Electronics, which is about 400 trillion won.

We must make this country one where innovation actively takes place, not just lip service from politicians. If such innovation is not accepted domestically, innovators will inevitably take their business ideas and technologies overseas. Due to labor conditions and costs, they move to Southeast Asia, and for innovation, they head to Silicon Valley. It is alarming to think about what will remain in this country. While labor can be supplemented by incoming foreign workers, high-level innovative talent must stay domestically. Former President Park Chung-hee spared no support to attract foreign talent to develop the country. Now, however, the trend is reversed, with high-level talent flowing overseas, which is worrying for the nation's future.

Kim Hong-jin, CEO of Work Innovation Lab

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.