Essays on technological innovation activities for successful commercialisation: Focusing on the energy industry

Abstract

namely, projects with firms prepared for commercialisation. This finding presents meaningful implications from the perspective of improving the efficiency of national R&D innovation activities. This dissertation considers various technological innovation activities conducted as a national means of successful technology commercialisation from an integrated and practical point of view between public and private domains. To succeed with a technology commercialisation strategy for national innovation, complementary cooperation that can maintain innovation sustainability is needed, rather than innovation activities biased toward either public or private sector. Therefore, the government should continuously promote innovation activities such as public-led technology development and R&BD project subsidies, transfer technologies developed at public research organisations or universities in the private domain, and it should support the private domain in adapting these technologies to meet the market demand timing. In addition, private firms should diversify their main technologies and continue innovative activities in diverse fields to become driving forces for national economic growth. Toward this end, it is desirable for public and private domains to recognise the characteristics of public technology transfer and the importance of R&D intensity and external private investment. They can then make a complementary effort to improve the sustainability of national innovation and performance.

For firms to maintain sustainability, they need to form strategies to respond promptly to internal and external environmental changes to enhance their competitiveness. Technological innovation activities, including the emerging technology commercialisation, are the driving forces that can satisfy these needs. Technology commercialisation refers to developing, producing, and selling products using new technologies or by improving the existing related technologies in the aforementioned series of processes. From a field perspective, technology commercialisation refers to transferring technology or starting a business to implement the potential value of technology created through R&D in the public or private sector. It may also refer to the entire process of creating economic value by applying the transferred technology to product or process innovation and utilising it in the market. Technology commercialisation is largely divided into public and private domains according to the entity of innovation activity. Public technology commercialisation is a method of improving firm performance by diffusing technologies developed by public research organisations or universities to the private sector. On the other hand, private technology commercialisation refers to firms’ self-reliant strategies for expanding profits in the form of diverse, innovative activities such as technology development, investment attraction, and product and service creation and sales. As technology commercialisation is a strategy that can lead to economic growth by efficiently utilising national resources through public and private cooperation, its need is gradually expanding. Therefore, awareness of its importance has increased, along with its continuous academic study. However, the main topics of prior studies were limited to analyses of the success of technology commercialisation or the impact of technology commercialisation on firm performance. Additionally, former studies used financial data from firms that were the primary commercialisation agents, as well patent data of technologies representing innovation for quantitative analysis. However, there was a limit in drawing practical implications because empirical data from the field could not be used. This dissertation seeks to fill this research gap, draw implications from a different point of view, and consider various technological innovation activities for successful technology transfer and commercialisation on a practical level. This study addresses technology commercialisation activities from an integrated perspective that encompasses public and private domains, and examines three representative technological innovation activities (public technology transfer, technology diversification, and R&BD), so that the government and firms may promote the efficient redistribution of national resources and create maximum effects based on empirical data. The first essay analyses the factors influencing the technology transfer fee in the transfer of public energy technology and examines the significant implications between public research organisations that are technology providers and private firms that are technology demanders. The role of technology transfer in business management is attractive and vital, but the academic findings of existing studies are limited because of lack of empirical data or field experience. Moreover, few studies have examined the technology transfer fee, which is the essential factor in the field. To overcome this research gap, this essay examined various factors affecting the technology transfer fee in the public technology transfer of the domestic energy industry from an integrated perspective of technological and contractual factors. As a result, for a technological factor the number of patents in the technology transfer contract and research fund of developed technology, and for a contractual factor the exclusivity of a contract and type of SME licensee had a significant effect on the technology transfer fee. Empirical analysis confirmed that the three factors mentioned above had a positive effect on the technology transfer fee, except for the case of an SME licensee. In addition, qualitative aspects were observed, such as the characteristics of public technology transfer (preference for SME licensee and non-exclusive, fixed-fee only contract) and characteristics from the licensee’s point of view (SMEs’ preference for non-exclusive contracts and large firms’ preference for exclusive and anti-competitive contracts with a fixed-fee only payment). Another important feature of this study is that it considers the energy industry as a research topic. Since the energy industry is an essential element for national security, it is critical in the national commercialisation strategy. South Korea had the eighth highest energy consumption globally in 2018. Since most of the energy is imported, national innovation is always required in the energy industry. However, it is difficult for the private domain to create its own innovation in the energy sector because, due to the nature of the energy technology and market, the return on investment is not high. Innovation in the energy sector is representative of technological innovation activities requiring collaborative innovation between public and private domains. Therefore, the novelty of this essay is that it deals with technology transfer in the energy industry, and this will have distinct implications for the study of technology commercialisation and technological innovation activities. The second essay tests the effect of a firm technological diversification strategy on firm performance. As firms pursue continuous survival and development to obtain profitability, they always strive to secure technological competitiveness with a comparative advantage. Technology-based firms promote technological diversification to improve their competitiveness. Technological diversification is a representative technological innovation activity for developing and commercialising new technology that is different from the leading technology companies have focused on to grow by continuously pioneering new markets. Firms pursue technological diversification to create new added value, yet it is necessary to examine whether this activity will always have a positive effect on firm performance. To answer this research question, this study analysed firm technological diversification for commercialisation in terms of patents, R&D, and firm performance. It was observed that technological diversification efforts (patent portfolio balancing) from a patent point of view had a negative impact on firm performance

however, it was also noted that R&D intensity—firms’ technological development efforts—could have a moderating effect that would weaken the negative effect of patent portfolio balancing on firm performance. These results suggest additional R&D that can increase the technology readiness level (TRL) after developing new technologies is necessary to create practical and profitable performance for firms because technological diversification that is not linked to successful commercialisation becomes a sunk cost. The final essay identifies the impact and highlights the importance of external private investment on commercialisation performance in the process of government-funded research and business development (R&BD) projects. Government-funded public R&D is the government’s technological innovation activity that creates private firm innovations and the accompanying national economic benefits. Existing public R&D has mostly supported the development of new technology, but recently R&BD-type government innovation activity has emerged to support the additional demonstration research of developed technologies to be utilised in the market. Since the country’s R&D resources are finite, the government should prioritise redistributing its limited budget efficiently to create the maximum effect. This essay proposes meaningful empirical research results on these significant national issues. The results showed that the amount of government funds, the difference in TRL before and after R&BD, and the amount of external private investment had positive effects on the commercialisation success of R&BD projects. Significantly, external private investment positively moderated the relationship between the two factors described above and commercialisation success. This result implies that in allocating the R&D budget for successful commercialisation from the government’s point of view, it will be necessary to select projects that are highly likely to attract external private investment