Knowledge-intensive business service within creative industry in Thailand : paper to be presented at “The 7th ASIALICS International Conference” Global Recession and Reform of Innovation Systems in Asia, 15-17 April 2010

Abstract

Thailand has experienced major shifts on its socio-economy over the past three decades, prior by moving from an agriculture economy toward a newly agro-industrialising country in the 1970s and then from labour-intensive to more knowledge-intensive exporters in the 1990s. The first decade of the new millennium, has been a critical moment for national innovation system (NIS) in Thailand, especially from the three major reforms in society, government and business. The paper reflects a systemic shift within the context of two major economic development concepts, knowledge-based economy (KBE) and creative economy (CE). There are 3 knowledge intensive business service oriented sectors within Thai creative industry namely; architecture, advertising and software. In order to capture the whole picture of the innovativeness in these sectors, we applied the Community Innovation Surveys (CIS) to grasp the information on innovation. The main findings from the survey illustrate that product innovation are mainly developed in-house in order to reduce cost of production or provision, while majority offrrms consider innovation activities as a high risk and expensive option. Supplier and competitor play a crucial role as major source of innovation.