창의적 혁신전략 대 모방적 혁신전략의 성과효과: 상황적 관점

Based on a typology of creative versus imitative innovation strategies previous researchers identified, this research examined the conceptual characteristics and differences regarding the two types of innovation strategy and empirically investigated what factors made more contribution to creative innovation strategy as compared with imitative innovation strategy from a contingency perspective. Recently innovation scholars have pointed out that since both creative and imitative innovation strategies possess their own merits and demerits, there is no inherent superiority of one of the two innovation strategies over the other. Thus, it seems to make more sense to examine the performance differences between creative and imitative innovation strategies in a contingency framework. Although there was some research focusing on the contingency aspect of performance differences between innovation and imitation strategies and in a similar vein between technological leaders and followers, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no previous research has empirically investigated the performance effects of creative versus imitative innovation strategies. This study suggested three contingency factors of international diversity, R&D intensity and organizational innovation as making a differential effect on the firm performance of those two innovation strategies. The results of empirical analysis using data from Korean Innovation Survey(KIS) showed that as international diversity and organizational innovation increased respectively, the use of creative innovation strategy made more contribution to firm performance as compared with imitative innovation strategy. On the other hand, it was found that R&D intensity did not make a differential effect on the performance of the two innovation strategies. The theoretical and practical implications for results of this research were discussed.