The Impact of Efficiency Parameters on Firms Innovative Activities: Evidence from Korean Firm-level data

With the premise that patent data are reliable indicators of innovativeness, the empirical analysis of R&D?patents relationship is useful for monitoring the efficiency of the innovation process. This paper extends the research on the relationship between R&D spending and patent counts by estimating the impact of efficiency parameters. A data set from 1255 firms with nonzero R&D expenditures in Korea was studied. Results show that the difference in firms¡¯ innovative performance is attributable to firm-specific characteristics, including propensity to patent and firm size, and differences in efficiency parameters. They also indicate that firms that conduct patent searches before starting R&D activities obtain an average of 13.9% more patents with an increase of one unit on the ¡®patent search¡¯ scale. Results also show the importance of the role of IP managers and revenue splitting policy for employee-inventors in the innovation process.