The pharmaceutical industry is leading technological innovation and knowledge advancement among advanced industries and is being categorized as new growth engines in Korea, a report said Monday.

The Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade산업연구원 said in the report that there were 12 prospective “new growth industries” including pharmaceutical, advanced materials, smart cars, smart healthcare, big data/cloud and 3D printing.

The report categorized the pharmaceutical sector as “progressively accumulative,” regarding the speed of technological innovation and accumulation of knowledge. It said the local drug makers’ innovation was fast and the R&D was active, after those of the future content development sector.

The pharmaceutical industry marked the highest scores in the category of original technology, intellectual property, and productivity, just after the advanced materials sector. Businesses that need to secure a market share based on accumulated industrial knowledge and technology were ranked high in these categories.

The R&D intensity index of the pharmaceutical industry was 3.3 percent, above the average of whole industries at 2.1 percent. Its intellectual property intensity index was 1.3 percent, the highest among new growth industries, or 0.8 people per 1,000 employees, the report said.

The pharmaceutical industry’s profitability was also high with 5.9 percent, following the 3D printing industry’s 6.3 percent, and the average of 5.4 percent.

While the top 1 percent companies accounted for 41.3 percent of market share on average, the pharmaceutical industry’s top 1 percent took up 32.7 percent, according to the report.

The pharmaceutical sector ranked low in the “on-demand index,” due to its inclination to focus on existing value chains rather than responding to a new demand.

The smart healthcare sector was categorized as “innovation and integration-centered,” because the integration of technologies and industries are more important than technology development. The innovation and integration-centered sectors need corporate ability to discover a new product or a service model, the report said.

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