Present research proposes efficient forwarding strategy and policy-level assignments for regional industry policy to promote innovation growth, through theoretical study and empirical analysis that are related to environmental change of the industrial economy of platform economy and current status of Korean local industries. The study operationally defined inclusive innovation growth as it includes both innovation growth and inclusive one. ‘Innovation growth’ refers to the efficient industrial economy development strategy under the representative condition of industrial development in the platform of economic environment of the 4th industrial revolution era, while ‘inclusive growth’ refers to inclusive development strategy on spatial perspective for sustainable development. Especially, the paper studied streams of theoretical research regarding recent environment of economy and related policy to illuminate the importance of industrial environment development focused on regional economy in terms of promoting inclusive innovation growth, and set forwarding strategy and basic direction of Korean regional industry policy through empirical analysis on current status of regional economy and structural changes of the regional industry. Based on these, the paper proposes some major policy-level assignments of local industry policy to apply local innovation development.

It is expected that the industrial economy environment we have faced and will face would evolve into platform economy through groundbreaking changes over the core technologies, demand market, and industrial production of the 4th industrial evolution era. It is also expected that region-focused customized production method would become dominative in platform economy, and the role of regional economy would become more important in regard to national economy growth. This is because individuals or separate regions emerges as converging unit of both production and consumption as customization of the two economic activities enters full-fledged status with the changes of core technology, industrial production, demand market, and industrial value chain with the 4th industrial revolution. In same perspective, organizations which establish international policies such as IMF, ADB, World Bank and OECD are proposing the inclusive growth as a new industrial economy development strategy. Inclusive growth refers to a political or institutional process aimed to resolve inequality among economic entities by ensuring their economic capabilities and participation in production process, and achieve balanced sharing of the reward of growth among the entities as much as their commitment. Present research seeks an efficient alternative for reform of regional industry policy in the perspective of inclusive growth. In other words, it proposes forwarding strategy and policy-level assignments in regard to ‘expansion of commitment elements’, ‘improvement of process and enhancement of inclusiveness’, and ‘diffusion of service result’.

Current regional economies in Korea show new unbalanced structure that displays inequality among metropolitan provinces and also among metropolitan cities, while the inequality between capital area and non-capital regions remains as it has been. In this context, depression of regional economic growth and aggravation of inequality are closely related to the low-growth of national economy in general.

In order to find out the cause of depression and alternatives for new growth, there is need to shed light on the discordance phenomenon between structural change and industry-innovation capabilities. First, in result of the analysis by variety of regional industry and universality index based on population scale, it can be said that the regional industry of Korea shows transition fromlinear hierarchical structure in 2000 to characterized dispersive structure in 2016. In other words, industries based on metropolitan cities and small & medium-sized cities in capital area show continuous growth(reinforced competitive advantage and decent possibilities of emergence of newly growing industries). Meanwhile, the variety(possiblities of emergence of newly growing industries) of industries based on metropolitan cities and small & medium-sized cities in non-capital area still stands, while the universality increases(weakening competitive advantage). Also, the increase of characterization of industries based on small & medium-sized cities(reinforced competitive advantage) can be observed.

With it, the analysis on regional innovation-industry capabilities shows the decreased capability and activity regarding innovation in the existing industrial development area. Spatial unbalance between industrial competence and innovation capability aggravates in both capital and non-capital area, and also in fundamental local government organizations of city · district · province unit. Especially, foothold cities with larger population and superior industrial competence need to rely upon the other region’s innovation elements in order to promote innovation growth. Meanwhile, regions with relatively small population and inferior industrial competence are showing the variety, with limitation in reinforcement of industrial characterization.

Through the result of analysis, a political implication on the positive perspective can be found in the transition of regional industry from hierarchical structure to dispersive one. Generally, a dispersive structure can be interpreted into spatial form of the platform-economic environment and possible attainment of various growth routes for local economy through region-based characterization. Also, another political implication can be found on the perspective of possible overcome of a negative factor, which is the aggravation of spatial inequality among industry-innovation competence. In order to resolve the inequality among the competence and achieve efficient usage, broadening of regional economy and dynamic activation of local industries’ network are needed. Renewal of regional industry’s policy unit and establish method of platform-based coordination system should be arranged in the process.

Accordingly, inclusive innovation growth is required in which local entities manage their major roles, and 3 fundamental directions to push the plan forward with efficiency can be set as following: First, platform-based economical maximazation of long-tail distribution is required. Second, great-sphere economy-based network industrial economy area should be established in order for overcome of spatial inequality between diversive structure and industry-innovation capability. Third, promote model of common property-based cluster is need to be reconsidered in order for diversive structure and long-tail distribution, and great sphere-based network industrial economy area to be established.

In line with those directions, region-driven local industry policy is proposed in the paper as input increase strategy, process reform strategy, and outcome diffusion strategy like following to apply inclusive innovation growth: First, ① improved relative variety through industry ATLAS : Selecting new local strategic industry, ② proposal of inclusive innovation of industrial compound area, as the input increase strategy. Second, ③ continuous discovery system for regional business model based on Entrepreneurial Discovery Process, ④ reinforcing public business foundation institute · space and combination with opened investment matching system, ⑤ proposal of EDP-based cultivation of local industry manpower as renewal strategy of business excavation process. Third, ⑥ platform-based reform of business supporting system, ⑦ modified evaluation system of local business through an adoption of non-market assessment index. Lastly, ‘establishment of smart regional innovation development plan’, ‘installation of city-province local innovation council’, ‘reform of special accounting system for balanced development’, and ‘renewal of special act for balanced development’ are required for establishment of new governance.