소프트웨어 산업 M&A 특성 요인들이 특허출원수에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

Today, companies are leveraging M&A as a key growth strategy to rapidly secure innovative external technologies and talent, while also improving internal capabilities to respond to rapidly changing technological environments and market demands. This study aims to provide strategic direction for M&A by empirically examining the impact of key characteristics of M&A, which is rapidly increasing in the software industry, on the number of patent applications, a symbol of innovation performance. We tested the impact of industry differences, technological similarity, and global M&A as key influencing variables, and the acquiring company's asset size, sales volume, and number of employees as control variables, using negative binomial regression analysis. The analysis revealed that both industry differences and technological similarity exhibited an inverted U-shaped relationship, with the number of patent applications being highest when the levels of these influencing variables were moderate. Furthermore, global M&A had a more positive impact on patent performance than domestic M&A. While the control effects of asset and sales volume positively impacted innovation performance, the number of employees had a negative impact due to inefficiencies in organizational integration. This study provides theoretical and practical implications that can assist in conducting strategic M&A considering the unique characteristics of the SW industry in the future.