Title: The effect of funding agency's choices: empirical evidence from large-scale R&D projects in Korea's automotive industry

Authors: Hyoung Ryul Ma; Debra Sabatini Dwyer

Addresses: Office of Strategic R&D Planning (OSP), Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, 8F, 305 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 06152, South Korea ' Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3760, USA

Abstract: A funding agency, as a crucial agent in the government-sponsored R&D system, makes funding choices to enhance the output or outcome of the R&D projects in which it invests. This paper examines the impact a Korean funding agency can have to drive the output of R&D projects. Using a data set of 147 government-sponsored large-scale R&D projects, this study tests how choice variables of a funding agency or R&D consortium affect technological output. This study finds that a funding agency's choice variables - the amount of funding, duration, and the intensity of monitoring - are quite influential on the success score and the number of publications of R&D projects, but do not significantly impact the number of patent applications. The results suggest that the funding agency, as an innovation facilitator, needs to expand its entrepreneurial activities, including consulting toward commercialisation, besides its traditional tasks related to project evaluation and management.

Keywords: R&D projects; technological output; funding agency; consortium; choice variable; funding; duration; monitoring; publication; patent application.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTPM.2020.111492

International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management, 2020 Vol.20 No.4, pp.273 - 298

Received: 26 Mar 2019
Accepted: 01 Oct 2019
Published online: 30 Nov 2020 *

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