Impact of Firms’ Cooperative Innovation Strategy on Technological Convergence Performance: The Case of Korea’s ICT Industry

Various strategies and policies have been established to facilitate technological convergence as it becomes increasingly important. However, the current status and progress direction of technological convergence is still not clear, as it is difficult to define and measure convergence phenomena. In this situation, this study examines how technological convergence has continued in Korea’s information and communication technology (ICT) industry, and, further, which cooperative innovation strategies are more effective in technological convergence. In this study, the convergence level of Korean ICT is measured using patent data from 2011 to 2015. Further, this study analyzes the impact of cooperative innovation strategies on Korean ICT convergence. It is believed that, by classifying technological convergence patent applications by the scope of convergence, the declining inter-field and inter-sector technological convergence has caused a decrease in the number of technological convergence patent applications since 2011. An analysis of the correlations between the strategies and performance of technological convergence indicates that ICT firms’ licensing activities play a positive role in creating technologically convergent performance. Specifically, cooperative innovation strategies for not only licensing but also external research contracts and joint research are determined to positively affect performance in inter-sector technological convergence. Meanwhile, only the licensing strategy in inter-field convergence correlates with technological convergence performance. These results will help interpret the driving forces of technological convergence.