Transition from Imitation to Innovation: Lessons Learnt from a Korean Multinational Corporation

It is critical for companies in developing countries to transform themselves to innovation from imitation in globalisation. This paper introduces a research exploring the evolution process of a high technology company in Korea from ‘imitator’ to ‘innovator’. It identifies some key characteristics of ‘imitators’ and ‘innovators’ and describes the development of different capabilities and their priority through the evolution. The nature of these capabilities is discussed together with assessment of their inter-dependence and impact. Based on detailed case studies in three strategic divisions of the Korean company, the paper categorises the transition process from imitation to innovation into four stages – external learning, internal learning and generation, dependent external performance, and independent external performance. It also finds that production capability is closely coupled to business innovative capability.