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Recently, the role of returnees in the economic development of various East Asian nations has received much attention. The early literature on the relocation of the most highly trained individuals from a developing nation to a developed nation viewed the phenomena as a “brain drain.” Since the 1990s, a new strand of thinking has suggested that for developing nations this was actually a positive phenomenon; as these expatriates studied and then worked abroad, they absorbed technical expertise, managerial, and entrepreneurial skills. These theories stipulated that these expatriates then returned home, and ignited a virtuous circle of technological entrepreneurship leading to rapid economic development. Much of this literature gives returnees a critical role in the home country's take-off period of the local information and communications technology (ICT) industry. This interpretative essay examines the evidence for …