Korea Small Business Innovation Research (KOSBIR)

The foreign exchange crisis in 1997 also led the Korean government to pursue economic revitalization, and part of the strategy was to improve the global competitiveness of local SMEs. Korea was the first East Asian country to establish, in 1998, a research and development (R&D) support program focused on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sculpted on the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program in the United States. The Korea Small Business Innovation Research (KOSBIR) was created in the context of an internationalization policy and open economy movement in the 1990s, followed by the Korean membership in the OECD. The KOSBIR program is reviewed in this monograph.