A study on the effects of forms of R&D strategy on corporate financial performance

In Schumpeterian competition, superior profit arises from successful innovation created by firm's R&D strategy. Such R&D strategy diverges as time passes. This study examines empirically the effects of diverged forms of R&D strategy such as technological assets, technological diversity, and technological similarity on firm performance in Korean pharmaceutical industry. With the financial and patent data of 96 firms for 14 years from 1994 to 2007, we measured variables. And then we performed panel analysis with 3 years lag between dependent variable and other variables. The result shows that firm performance increases as technological asset and technological diversification increase. But technological similarity positively affects on firm performance in opposition to our hypothesis. We interpret and discuss these results and highlight the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.