DEVELOPMENT OF MANAGEMENT MECHANISMS FOR ENTERPRISE INNOVATION AND INVESTMENT ACTIVITY IN THE CONTEXT OF A TECHNOLOGICAL SOVEREIGNTY STRATEGY

Abstract

Technological sovereignty has become a strategic objective for economies seeking to reduce dependence on external sources of technology, yet the mechanisms that link innovation and investment policy to measurable outcomes remain unevenly understood. This study examines how five Asian economies: China, Japan, South Korea, India and Singapore − manage innovation and investment activity between 2021 and 2024, and how effectively they convert research spending into high-technology exports. Data were drawn from open international sources, including the World Bank, WIPO and UNESCO. Compound annual growth rates were computed for nine indicators, an index of technological sovereignty was constructed from normalised measures of R&D intensity, patent applications and high-technology exports, and a coefficient of innovation-investment return was calculated for each country. The results show that China leads the index at 0.817 but returns a negative coefficient of −1.59, indicating that exports fell while research spending rose. South Korea combines high R&D intensity with moderate positive returns. Singapore achieves the highest coefficient of 17.62 on a small research base. India records the fastest growth in exports and patents from a low starting point, while Japan maintains research intensity as its economy contracts. The study concludes that technological sovereignty depends less on the volume of investment than on institutional arrangements that connect research funding, industrial policy and commercial output, and that these arrangements are transferable in principle but conditional in practice