Innovation and entrepreneurship rank highly on the strategic agenda of most countries today. As global economic competition intensifies, many national policymakers now recognize the central importance of entrepreneurship education and the building of financial institutions to promote long-term innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Drivers of Innovation brings together scholars from the United States and Asia to explore those education and finance policies that might be conducive to accelerating innovation and developing a more entrepreneurial workforce in East Asia. 

Some of the questions covered include: How do universities in China and Singapore experiment with new types of learning in their quest to promote innovation and entrepreneurship? Is there a need to transform the traditional university into an “entrepreneurial university”? What are the recent developments in and outstanding challenges to financing innovation in China and Japan? What is the government’s role in promoting innovative entrepreneurship under the shadow of big business in South Korea? What can we learn about the capacity of services to drive innovation-led growth in India? 

Drivers of Innovation will serve as a valuable reference for scholars and policymakers working to develop human capital for innovation in Asia.

Contents

1. Educating Entrepreneurs and Financing Innovation in Asia 
   Fei Yan, Yong Suk Lee, Lin William Cong, Charles Eesley, and Charles Lee
2. Fostering Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Education, Human Capital, and the Institutional Environment 
   Charles Eesley, Lijie Zhou, and You (Willow) Wu
3. Entrepreneurial Scaling Strategy: Managerial and Policy Considerations 
   David H. Hsu
4. Innovation Policy and Star Scientists in Japan 
   Tatsuo Sasaki, Hiromi S. Nagane, Yuta Fukudome, and Kanetaka Maki
5. Financing Innovation in Japan: Challenges and Recent Progress 
   Takeo Hoshi and Kenji Kushida
6. Promoting Entrepreneurship under the Shadow of Big Business in Korea: The Role of the Government 
   Hicheon Kim, Dohyeon Kim, and He Soung Ahn
7. The Creativity and Labor Market Performance of Korean College Graduates: Implications for Human Capital Policy 
   Jin-Yeong Kim
8. Financing Innovative Enterprises in China: A Public Policy Perspective 
   Lin William Cong, Charles M. C. Lee, Yuanyu Qu, and Tao She
9. Forging Entrepreneurship in Asia: A Comparative Study of Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore 
   Zhou Zhong, Fei Yan, and Chao Zhang
10. Education and Human Capital for Innovation in India’s Service Sector 
    Rafiq Dossani
11. In Need of a Big Bang: Toward a Merit-Based System for Government-Sponsored Research in India 
    Dinsha Mistree
12. The Implications of AI for Business and Education, and Singapore’s Policy Response 
    Mohan Kankanhalli and Bernard Yeung

Command economies gave Communist-era elites administrative control and material privilege but severely restricted money income and private wealth. Markets and privatization inject new value into public assets and create unprecedented opportunities for elite insiders. These opportunities depend on the extent of regime change and barriers to asset appropriation. Regime change varies from the survival of the entire party hierarchy to its rapid collapse and defeat in competitive elections. Barriers to asset appropriation vary with the extent, pace, and form of privatization, and the concentration and liquidity of assets. Different combinations of such circumstances jointly affect the extent to which elites obtain ownership of control of privatized assets, use political office to extract larger incomes, move into salaried elite occupations, or fall out of the elite altogether. Regime change and barriers to asset appropriation affect change at the national level, but outcomes vary across economic sectors because of characteristics of organizations, elite positions, and assets. This elementary theory serves to integrate varied findings from recent research on Central Europe, China, and Russia, and yields predictions for other regions.

In the second decade of market reform, rural cadre and entrepreneur households enjoy large net income advantages of roughly equal magnitude. Cadre household incomes are primarily from salaries, and they do not decline with increasing levels of rural industrialization. These cross-sectional findings about income determination are reinforced by an event-history analysis of occupational shifts. With large income advantages based on salary income, at no point in market reform have cadres moved into self-employment or private entrepreneurship at higher rates than ordinary farmers. However, village cadres have become the most important source of collective enterprise managers and collective enterprise managers in turn have become the most important source of new private entrepreneurs. Therefore the thriving collective enterprise sector of the 1980's has served as a breeding ground for private enterprise in the 1990's.

When market reform generates rapid growth in an agrarian subsistence economy, changes in inequality may be due to economic growth and structural change rather than to the intrinsic features of markets. the case of post-Mao China is examined using nationally representative survey data gathered in 1996 to address unresolved questions about findings from 1980s surveys. Well into reform's second decade, political officeholding has a large net impact on household income -- comparable to that of operating a private enterprise. Contrary to findings based on <i>earlier</i> surveys and expectations about the impact of growth, cadre household advantages are stable across levels and forms of economic expansion. Returns to entrepreneurship, however, decline sharply with the spread of wage employment. Further declines in relative returns to political position are therefore unlikely to occur due to the further spread of private household entrepreneurship, and theories of changes based on this mechanism appear untenable.

This volume, composed of nine provocative chapters by prominent Chinese specialists, analyzes Chinese economic change — the break-up of collective farming, the growth of private commerce, and the decentralization of industry.

Ezra Vogel contrasts the potential of China to industrialize with the rapid post-war industrial breakthroughs made by Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. He believes China, despite starting with a lower average income and lower educational level than these other east Asian nations, possesses the drive and determination to make rapid industrial progress before the mid-21st century.

David Zweig explores the dilemmas which result from continued regulatory controls on some sectors of the Chinese rural economy combined with deregulation of other sectors.

The Chinese village receives the keen attention of Thomas Gold and Jean C. Oi. Gold examines "decollectivization" in terms of how village leadership continues to maintain the power of the collective over the peasants and the nature of peasant "entrepreneurship" that has emerged. Oi suggests that diversification and particularly the industrialization of the village economics following reforms allow the collective to endure as an entity but with a different character.

• Ramon H. Meyers focuses on how the significance of the CCP's decision to initiate new economic reforms, first in 1978 and again in 1984, will influence the overall economic development in China. Robert Dernberger assesses the rate and structure of Chinese economic growth.
• Justin Yifu Lin explores the agricultural expansion during 1980 and 1984 as a result of the household responsibility system reform. The impact of the reform on saving and investment mechanisms receives the attention of Bruce Reynolds.
• Dorothy Solinger discusses Wuhan's comprehensive urban economic reform in terms of decentralization, leasing, stocks, bonds, bankruptcy, manager responsibility, markets, and trade centers.
• Victor C. Falkenheim explores China's efforts at decentralization of the economy through fostering regional reforms.

These authors, through their explorations and observations of China's efforts at reform, present a dynamic picture of change. However, they have not overlooked the staggering problems facing China's advancement into the 21st century. The China specialists who contributed to this volume provide a comprehensive view of China's path toward full industrialization.