An Exploratory Study on the Roles of Intraregional, Interregional, and International R&D Collaboration on Innovation Performance in Korean Industries

Recent literature has recognized the importance of regional innovation systems (RIS) and external linkages that supports the creation, development, and renewal of the RIS on innovation performance. This study explores the direct and interacting effects of them on the basic that more intraregional, interregional and international R&D collaboration enhances innovation performance due to their advancement of external knowledge flows of the firms within and across the regions. Using the empirical data from the 2014 Korean Innovation Survey, comprising 2345 manufacturing and 950 service companies, our regression analysis explores the direct and interacting roles of those collaborations to the firm’s new product sale and patent application performance. We found that intra-regional collaboration consistently improves new product sale and patent application. The 3-way interaction of intraregional, interregional and international collaboration can improve new product sale. The 2-way interaction of intraregional and interregional collaboration marginally improves patent application. However, we uncover that intraregional collaboration interacting with interregional or international collaboration may reduce new product sale. This study contributes to the literature by exploring how a firm interacts with the RIS to enhance its innovation performance.