기술자원 정리를 통해 혁신을 달성할 수 있는가? 혁신 효율성 및 혁신의 종류에 미치는 영향을 중심으로

Constant learning in a rapidly changing environment is essential for firms’ sustainable competitive advantage. Firms are not able to foster new knowledge unless room is made for new ideas. In order to learn new things, the process of discarding obsolete knowledge, which is called ‘unlearning’, has to be preceded. Some researchers suggested that organizations should allocate part of their resources to ‘unlearning’ for achieving successful learning. Although many scholars have acknowledged the necessity of much more academic attention on divestitures, strategy researchers on innovation mainly focused on understanding how firms create and expand their resources. Divestment research in strategic management is understudied and needed additional investigation. Focusing on patents, which have been considered important technological resources of firms, this study examines the effects of abandoning technological resources on firms’ innovation performance. Resource divestiture refers to the shedding of firm-controlled asset from the firm’s resource portfolio, and the related factor market transfer of that resource to another firm. Based on the definition of divestiture, this study suggests the concept of technological divestiture as the abandonment of patents before the maximum granted duration and transfer the patents ownership to another firm. Based on the patents that were released due to non-payment of maintenance fees and transfer to the ownership by the firm, this study examines how technological resource divestitures lead innovation efficiency and how they affect different innovation type, explorative innovation and exploitative innovation. In order to calculate innovation efficiency of the firm, this study uses the frontier methodology, which measures the relative efficiency of firms in transforming resources to innovative achievements. This study uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, which is one of the prevalently used frontier approaches. In order to test the hypotheses, we uses the patenting activities of the global pharmaceutical firms over the period 2000-2016. The overall sample is comprised of 1,128 firm-year observations and 62,062 patents are generated by the firms in the sample of this study. Multiple archival sources are used for the test of hypotheses. Data on patent expirations and sell-offs are provided by USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office). We also collects data on new drugs from the official drug approval list of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This study applies generalized estimating equation (GEE) for analyzing the effect of technological resource divestiture on innovation efficiency. Also, generalized method of moments (GMM) are applied for analyzing the effect of technological resource divestiture on innovation type. Results suggest that technological resource divestiture increases the innovation efficiency of the firms. While technological resource divestiture has no effect on exploitative innovation, it has a positive effect on explorative innovation.