Since 1982, the government of Korea has actively promoted vertical cooperative R&D programs between government-sponsored research institutes (GRIs) and private firms. A number of firms participated in the programs because cooperative R&D could lower the risk and could contribute to rapid commercialization of many technologies.
This thesis examines the effectiveness of vertical cooperative R&D projects by the types of project initiator and the structure of cooperation between GRIs and industrial firms, and analyzes the performance of participating firms' technology acquisition strategies for commercial utilization of cooperative R&D results at the project level. The data have been obtained from 162 cases of vertical cooperative R&D projects performed form 1982 to 1989 under the Government-Industry Cooperative R&D Program sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology(MOST) in Korea.
Three different commercialization strategies -- exclusive cooperative R&D strategy, in-house development augmented cooperative R&D strategy, and licensing-in supplemented cooperative R&D strategy -- are empirically derived through cluster alanysis of the relative usage rates cooperative R&D and of other supplementary technology acquisition methods. The findings suggest that the firms participating in vertical cooperative R&D projects should try to utilize other supplementary technology acquisition methods in order to achieve commercial utilization of the vertical cooperative R&D results. The effectiveness of additional technology sourcing, however, varies significantly according to the types of innovation, i.e., project-business relatedness. If the project belongs to an existing business area, in-house development augmented cooperative R&D strategy is the most effective. On the other hand, licensing-in supplemented cooperative R&D strategy id the most successful, if the project belongs to new business area.
The cooperative R&D projects are classified into 4 groups by two criteria, i.e., the level of participation of firms, and the breadth of cooperation. The findings suggest that firms should actively participate in executing R&D projects. In addition, in order to enhance commercial success, cooperation between GRIs and industrial firms should not be limited to R&D stage only. The breadth of cooperation should be extended to commercialization stage. Small- and medium-sized firms participating in vertical cooperative R&D projects in Korea usually lack internal technological capabilities that are needed to commercialize the results of cooperative R&D. In the analysis of 162 vertical cooperative R&D projects, the performance of LDC type cooperative R&D project, where GRI and participant firm cooperated in both R&D and commercialization stages, significantly higher than that of DC type cooperative R&D projects, where GRI and participant firm cooperated in R&D stage only. In addition, the effectiveness of the cooperative projects varies by the type of project initiators. The rate of commercialization of GRI initiated cooperative R&D projects is significantly higher than that of firm initiated projects.
