• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.153-175
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• 2010

Firms must focus on innovative activities via R&D investment in order to secure competitive advantage and sustainable growth. However, their innovative activities do not always result in successful outcomes and are often obstructed by uncertainty and non-appropriability of technology being developed and by insufficient internal resources and capabilities to tap into it. In this situation, collaboration with external partners can be a part of good alternative strategy to solve those problems. This paper aims to analyze what factors lead to Korean manufacturing companies’ decision to collaborate with external partners for technology innovation. For empirical analysis, we used the Korean Innovation Data compiled by STEPI, government-funded research institute in Korea. The research findings are: 1) firms tend to participate in external collaboration for product innovation with greater firm size, more past collaboration experiences and when they belong to high-tech industries 2) unlike our expectation, our chosen ‘innovation-impeding’ factors are found not to contribute to the enhancement of collaboration for product innovation.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.181-187
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• 2018

With a view to deepening the research stream on the factors positively influencing the export growth and the employment increase of South Korean small and medium companies, this research has developed the research model about the impact of small and medium companies' external technology R&D collaboration network heterogeneity on their export growth and employment increase, and has empirically tested the research model with the 2,200 data collected from the small and medium companies in the South Korea. This study illuminates the two points from the empirical testing results. One point is that small and medium companies' external technology R&D collaboration network heterogeneity significantly and positively influences their employment increase from technology development. The other point is that small and medium companies' export growth from technology R&D partially mediates the impact of the external technology R&D collaboration network heterogeneity on their employment increase from technology R&D.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.199-207
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• 2017

The business environment changing very fast with technology advance and convergence makes the role of R&D become more and more important to firms' success. By analyzing the 683 firm-level data of small and medium venture firms with the ordinary least squares regression, this study sheds new light on the following four points. First, small and medium venture firms' exterior R&D collaboration network heterogeneity positively impacts their import substitution from technology development. Second, the existence of the corporate R&D center moderates the positive impact of small and venture firms' exterior R&D collaboration network heterogeneity on their import substitution from technology development. Third, small and venture firms' exterior R&D information network heterogeneity positively impacts their import substitution from technology development. Fourth, The existence of the corporate R&D center moderates the positive influence of small and venture firms' exterior R&D information network heterogeneity on their import substitution from technology development.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.309-324
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• 1998

본 연구는 급속한 기술변화와 경쟁심화에 의해 생산체계의 분화가 촉진되고 있는 컴퓨터산업을 사례로 기업간 네트워크의 형성실상과 요인을 분석하였다. 네트워크는 거래원리와 기업간 관계의 측면에서 정의되었으며 하청과 협력네트워크로 구분하였다. 설문조사 결과에 의하면, 하청네트워크는 약 75%, 협력네트워크는 약 85%의 기업이 참여하고 있어 어떤 형태로든 상당수의 기업이 네트워크를 형성하고 있다. 협력네트워크는 물론 하청네트워크도 거래기업간 보완성과 전문성에 의해 지속적인 거래관계로 형성되고 있다. 이것은 기업간 네트워크가 다층화된 생산체계에서 외부기업의 자원을 이용하여 경쟁력을 강화하는 기업전략임을 의미한다. 따라서 기업간 네트워크는 세계화-지방화 시대의 경제공간구조의 변화를 살펴볼 수 있는 중요한 지표가 될 수 있다.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.147-165
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• 2012

Recently, the theory of open innovation emerges as a new innovation paradigm. This paper aims to examine open innovation activities of SMEs. Many firms tend to search new knowledge from various external sources and to pursue to achieve innovation resources or knowledge of external innovators. Particularly, this paper focus on the process of external knowledge networking and open innovation occurred in the process of technology innovation. The data used in this study were those that had been collected for total 3,400 sample SMEs that had conducted R&D. and in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 SMEs located at Chungbuk-Technopark. Empirical findings can be summarized as follows; SMEs tend to search new knowledge from various external sources and to pursue to achieve innovation resources or knowledge of external innovators, because they have lack of innovation resources. therefore, the conducting of open innovation affected positively the innovation performance of SMEs. In addition, empirical findings also indicated that expanding flexibility of labor market enhances open innovation activities of SMEs.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.153-184
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• 2011

This paper investigates what kind of technological partner firms want to cooperate with in terms of partner location. Two geographical factors are considered. One is geographical proximity, given the tradeoff between the effectiveness of knowledge spillovers in proximity and diverse knowledge absorption from geographically distant partners. The other is how many other firms are co-located with potential partners because it is known that clustering regions can create more technological outputs. Analysis on 2008 Korea Innovation Survey data finds that partner proximity is the single most important factor in choosing a cooperation partner. While firms that are located in a region crowded with related industries prefer proximate partners, others that are surrounded by unrelated industries are more likely to cooperate with distant partners. The findings suggest that geographical proximity matters in partner selection because it not only stimulates knowledge spillovers but also reduces costs involving R&D cooperation such as monitoring costs and information costs. Moreover, firms take into consideration both the benefits and risks of clustering regions. If there are so many unrelated firms that they create agglomeration diseconomies such as congestion costs and unintentional knowledge leakages, firms are more likely to try to find their cooperation partners in other regions.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.125-135
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• 2011

It is important that SMEs build business ecosystems on the open innovation for sustainable innovation. And, many Korea companies have tried to adopt new ideas from external collaborators and transfer their technologies to others based un the open innovation. But SMEs hard to progress it than middle & large companies. So, our research purpose is to find success factors of open innovation in regional SMEs.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.109-129
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• 2009

This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of SME's R&D system empirically. Specifically, this study analyze the relationships among R&D inputs(R&D investment, R&D human resource management), process(R&D planning, external network, internal cooperation), and output(technological innovation). A questionnaire was developed to measure the above variables. To test these relations, data were collected from the small and medium-sized IT firms located in Daegu-Kyungbuk region. The survey data of 154 firms were integrated as the empirical base for testing the relations. Most respondents were from the managers. Structural equation modeling analyses were used to examine the relations. Major results are as follows: Firstly, R&D HRM was positively and significantly influenced on the R&D planning. Secondly, R&D planning was positively and significantly affected on the external network, internal cooperation, and technological innovation. Thirdly, the both relations between R&D investment and R&D planning, and external network and technological innovation were not significant statistically. These results suggest the following implications. First, R&D human resource management is very important for IT SMEs. Secondly, internal cooperation mediates R&D inputs and technological innovation by approaching the other department's unique resources and by sharing the cost of new resource development. Several future researches need to overcome the limitations of this research. First, this study's sample was based on the small and medium-sized IT firms just located in Daegu-Kyungbuk region. This limitation may imply that empirical results can not represent overall small and medium-sized firm's situations. Therefore, future research needs to include different samples. Secondly, this study depends on the latitudinal study.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.209-219
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• 2019

This study analyzed the impacts and factors of the government's local industry upbringing policy on business growth. We analyzed the effect of product innovation and technological innovation on business competence, external cooperation level, R&D investment, and corporate growth using PLS(Partial Least Squares) structural equation. The results show that management competence and external cooperation level have a significant effect on firm growth and that there is a moderating effect between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Management competence affects product innovation. Product innovation was analyzed to have mediating effects on firm growth. Finally, the policy direction of increasing managerial capacity is presented, and the limitations and future research directions are suggested.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to suggest an efficient way for ventures to achieve innovation performance through R&D cooperative arrangements. Achieving innovation is one of the critical factors for the survival of ventures. Unlike established firms, ventures often do not have the specialized assets necessary to take technological developments to the product and market stages. Young and resource-constrained firms can achieve innovation by finding and accessing to the complementary resources from R&D cooperation. In the current business environment, many firms are likely to engage in multiple simultaneous R&D cooperations with different partners. Recent research stream addresses the importance of efficient cooperation management from the holistic portfolio perspective. Since maintaining the multiple cooperative relations require substantial amount of time and effort, managing cooperative relationships play a more important role to resource-constrained firms. In order to find an efficient composition of R&D cooperative partners, we mainly focus on the diversity of partner type and dependence level in partnership. We analyze the data on Korean manufacturing ventures collected in the Korean Innovation Survey (KIS) which was conducted by the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI). The KIS questionnaire assesses the existence of cooperative relationships with different types of partners respectively. The types of cooperating partners are affiliated companies, suppliers, clients & customers, competitors or other firms in the same industry, consulting firms, universities, and research institutes. We confirm that ventures obtain relatively higher benefits from R&D cooperation compared with established firms in terms of innovation performance. The results show that a moderate level of diversity in cooperative partner type composition increases innovation. Moreover, diversity of cooperation dependency among the partners enhances innovation performance. Likewise, concentrating on the quality aspects of cooperative composition, such as diversity of partners and degree of dependencies, this study offers some implications for ventures in managing partners from an integrative perspective.