Towards the Detroit of Asia: Empirical research insights of Thailand's OEM strategy

The automotive industry is one of the strategic clusters of Thailand. This study explores Thailand's national innovation system (NIS) strategy and cluster policies in driving the automotive industry towards the Detroit of Asia. The analysis of automotive cluster is based on Porter's Diamond Model and NIS framework. Unlike other Asian countries that competed and moved forward with the own brand manufacture (OBM) strategies, Thailand took a different NIS approach in competition to become the automotive manufacturing hub of Southeast Asia. The results provide lessons and insightful strategic implications for other newly industrialized countries (NICs) attempting to move up the technological ladders.