The Korean government has shifted its R&D investment position from a fast-follower to a first-mover by expanding investments in high-risk, innovative R&D as well as research into future leading industries. Producing innovative R&D outputs requires stable financial support for creative and challenging R&D projects in the long term. However, it also needs systematic output utilization support, such as follow-up R&D, finding potential users, market creation, and regulation improvement. This report examines the issues and suggests improvements for each stage of the research output utilization system of national R&D programs.
Three suggestions are drawn from this analysis. In the research output production support stage, public research institutes should use research output management, utilization strategies and strengthen patent analysis in R&D to produce highly applicable outputs. They should also streamline administrative procedures and foster the capabilities of agencies to manage research outputs more efficiently. In the output transfer phase, public research institutes should support capability enhancements of technology licensing offices(TLOs), strengthen follow-up management of transfers, and expand cooperation with private technology trading institutions. In the research output utilization stage, public research institutes should establish an inter-ministerial cooperative system to support the commercialization performance of subsidiaries of industrial-academia-research cooperation technology holdings.