[For more diverse corporate information on the startups mentioned in this article, please visit Unicorn Factory's big data platform 'Data Lab'.]
Amid the crisis of local extinction, the core card promoted by local governments across the nation is undoubtedly "business attraction." They pour administrative resources into luring high-quality companies and promising startups from other regions using unprecedented tax incentives, land provision at near-zero cost, and various subsidies. However, let us look at this coldly. When a company in Region A moves its nest to Region B in search of better conditions, has the national pie grown by even one single won?
Region A, stripped of its valuable companies, stumbles due to industrial hollowing out and insufficient tax revenue, falling into a vicious cycle where it attempts to compensate by luring companies from yet another Region C with even more stimulating incentives. This wasteful scramble taking place within Korea's narrow land is not true regional development. It is merely "zero-sum administration" driven by performance-oriented Local Governments, characterized by passing the buck.
It is time to completely shift the paradigm from "enticing external companies" to "endogenous development," which nurtures the potential of companies already rooted in our regions. For instance, if a small and medium-sized enterprise with superior automotive lamp manufacturing technology is established locally, there is no need to scheme to steal factories from other regions just because motor, battery, or vehicle semiconductor companies are absent.
Instead, provide intensive R&D funding and scale-up capital focused on the precision optics and electrical system technologies held by the lamp company. This creates a "technology spin-off" ecosystem that allows the company itself to extend its business branches beyond optical control into areas such as motor controllers, battery management systems (BMS), and vehicle sensor modules.
Sprouting new industrial clusters using the proven unique capabilities of local companies as fertile soil is the most honest growth model that expands the size of the entire market without cutting into competitors' flesh. George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, started his business in Rochester, a small town in New York State, USA. While countless other companies moved their headquarters to major cities chasing short-term profits at the time, Eastman never left Rochester, where he had taken root.
He generously poured the profits earned by his company into expanding local infrastructure, including the establishment of the University of Rochester, a music school, hospitals, and technology research institutes. He saw clearly that building the foundational strength of the entire local community was the path to securing Kodak's R&D talent and ensuring the longevity of the enterprise. Kodak and Rochester were not in a relationship where they squeezed each other; rather, they formed one solid ecosystem growing together.
The performance records of Local Governments filled by snatching others' cakes are as illusory as castles made of sand. If another region with better conditions emerges, companies will pack their bags and leave at any time. What administration should focus on is not a flashy competition for attraction. It is about laying down sustainable ladders so that indigenous companies, which have silently sweated to protect the region, can transform their bodies into the next stage of high-value-added industries.
Only when there is the stubbornness of regions to polish rough stones embedded in their own land into gems rather than coveting rolling stones from outside will a healthy industrial map with self-sustaining capabilities be completed across all of Korea.
[MoneyToday startup media platform Unicorn Factory]
in OPINION
