Relationship between protecting innovation and R&D partners: focusing on moderation effect

ABSTRACT

This article empirically examines how institutional protection methods and non-institutional protection methods for innovation have a moderating effect on relationships among partners (suppliers, customers, competitors, universities, public research institutes) and product innovation performance (product quality improvement, technology standardization). Based on a Korea Innovation Survey of the manufacturing sector, the results are that institutional protection methods have positive moderating effects on the relationship between cooperation with public research institutes and industrial technology standardization. On the other hand, non-institutional innovation protection methods have negative moderating effects on the relationship between cooperation with customers and product quality improvement. The contribution of our research is that it introduces a comparative model to deal with moderating effects of appropriability between each R&D partner and different types of product innovations.

KEYWORDS:

• Appropriability
• innovation
• R&D partners
• product innovation performances

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• O32
• O34

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).