External knowledge search, innovative performance and productivity in the Korean ICT sector

In recent years, Korea’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry has grown rapidly. The prosperity of the ICT industry has brought growing recognition that rising productivity and innovative performance have made major contributions to ensuring competitive advantage in international markets. In this context, recent studies stress the importance of external knowledge for improving both innovative performance and productivity. This paper empirically investigates the effects of firms’ external knowledge search behavior on their productivity as well as their innovative performance in the Korean ICT manufacturing sector. Based on firm-level data from the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), this study indicates that incremental innovation and productivity are both related to external knowledge search.