The world economy hit bottom when it encountered the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and had slowly recovered, but again with the 2007 global financial crisis the economies in advanced nations became sluggish. The world’s supply capacity has consistently expanded since the collapse of the Berlin Wall with the resources in Eastern Europe being transferred to the capitalistic world. Another important factor that fostered the growth in the world’s supply capacity is China’s economic liberalization. However, demand lags behind. With the advent of worldwide deflation, which is also called “waiting economy”, we won’t be able to promote consumption and investment unless we build up the people’s confidence to spend.

Around the world, the online and offline markets are being integrated and localization supported by mega-FTAs is gaining power. In this hyper-connective society, some service industries like finance, medicine, and education are directly linking customers to producers with the help of smart phone applications. Some of the world’s best education opportunities like Khan Academy and CS50, the computer programming instruction which is provided by Harvard University, are opened up to the public for free. Even manufacturing industries are experiencing innovation and manipulating the Internet in the industry 4.0 era. With this fast-changing world, start-ups are either developing into world-level big companies in no more than five years or have extremely short longevity or even suffer sudden death.

In order to encourage individuals and companies to come up with technology-related ideas constantly, we need to (1) stabilize the ecosystem for advanced civilian startups, (2) collaborate with open innovation, and (3) develop new future industries, the government working with the people. The government-run 17 creative economy centers, dotting across the country, offer workspace, funding and advice to start-ups and budding entrepreneurs. Each center has a mentoring service provided by one of the largest companies in Korea, such as Samsung and Hyundai. The government intends the centers to be the places for collaboration and competition among young entrepreneurs with the help of big companies. Creative economy is a new economic strategy that creates new industries and markets by combining the people’s imagination and creativity with scientific technology and ICT.

Translation by Kang, Soo Jung

President of Salt&Light