Why Korean offshore platform industry has recently faced a serious financial crisis in spite of the global competitiveness in shipbuilding industry? To investigate the question, we apply ‘complex product system (CoPS)’ theory to the Korean offshore platform from the perspective of the unique characteristics of the CoPS compared with those of mass produced goods and capabilities for developing the CoPS. We found that offshore platform industry has the characteristics of the CoPS, such as ‘high involvement of contractors’, ‘project based construction by a strategic alliance’, ‘high customization of the platform with substantial risk’, and ‘high level of government-side inclusion in market development’. Nonetheless, the Korean industry had failed to develop the capabilities sufficiently that consist of networking and partnering capabilities among innovation actors, broad, deep, and integrated knowledge for designing and developing the platform, and leveraging capabilities of supportive policies for integration of whole activities in value chain. Our findings contribute to the extension of ‘CoPS’ theory by achieving analytical generalization of case study. We also provide strategies and policies settings to overcome the crisis of the industry as well as other CoPS industry.