The first essay titled “Fundamental Sources of Long-run Labour Productivity Improvements in Canada” examines the importance of Research and Development activities, as well as the stock of public infrastructure, and economic openness as sources of growth in labour productivity in the Canadian economy within the last four decades. The second paper titled “R&D Spillovers, Innovation, and Entry” extends a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of R&D spillovers on entry and the resulting equilibrium market structure. It is shown that the degree of spillovers plays a fundamental role on the number of firms entering the market, their R&D activities, and social welfare. The third paper titled “The Search for New Drugs: A Theory of R&D in the Pharmaceutical Industry” uses a dynamic model of optimal patent design and in the presence of information externalities studies the evolution of technological progress in the context of a pharmaceutical industry.

The first essay titled “Fundamental Sources of Long-run Labour Productivity Improvements in Canada” examines the importance of Research and Development activities, as well as the stock of public infrastructure, and economic openness as sources of growth in labour productivity in the Canadian economy within the last four decades. The second paper titled “R&D Spillovers, Innovation, and Entry” extends a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of R&D spillovers on entry and the resulting equilibrium market structure. It is shown that the degree of spillovers plays a fundamental role on the number of firms entering the market, their R&D activities, and social welfare. The third paper titled “The Search for New Drugs: A Theory of R&D in the Pharmaceutical Industry” uses a dynamic model of optimal patent design and in the presence of information externalities studies the evolution of technological progress in the context of a pharmaceutical industry.

In the telecom manufacturing industry, the business environment is characterized by high competition and challenging tasks. To be able to thrive in this environment, companies have to work hard in order to develop innovations in the form of products, services and solutions to the marketplace. R&D departments, in collaboration with other functional departments and external agents, become the main engine for innovation development. R&D managers face the difficult challenge of effectively managing innovation projects, which are surrounded by high complexity, uncertainty and risk. To help address this issue, this thesis explores four successful innovation projects within four distinct international telecom technology suppliers, namely Nortel, Alvarion, ZTE and ST-Ericsson, to identify the factors that directly influenced the success behind each innovation. To do so, a comprehensive study of the telecom innovation system was conducted; this study enabled the researchers to devise a framework that describes the innovation process in the industry and that highlights the value of the marketing department, the importance of early customer involvement and that clearly demonstrates the self-sufficiency of today’s telecom manufacturing department. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of the human factor and the substantial value of nurturing staff and fostering different roles within the innovation team, such as that of the gatekeeper, entrepreneur, technology specialist and senior manager. R&D management literature lists over 250 different success factors; the framework included in this thesis presents only the 60 factors that are relevant to the industry. These factors are categorized in two ways: (1) As either order winners or order qualifiers and (2) as either being affected or unaffected by the innovation type. The first categorization serves to identify 25 factors that can become a source of competitive advantage if managed accordingly and 35 factors that are considered to be the status quo of the industry, and while very important are not a source of competitive advantage. The second categorization brings awareness to the R&D manager by identifying nine factors, namely: the source of the idea, access to information, the probability of commercial success, the comprehensiveness of the requirements, newness to firm, market strength, innovation receptiveness, degree of innovation and supportive environment. The research showed that these nine factors are directly affected by the innovation type (incremental, architectural or radical).

With the development of globalization, increasingly more companies began to use worldwide resources to do product or service research and development. Multinational corporations (MNC) became to more rely on their subunits that located in different countries to conduct innovations. As a result, keep a good knowledge transfer between headquarter and subunits or among peer subunits is crucial for MNC to operate R & D activities. This study explores the relationship between knowledge transfer and R & D operations through two knowledge transfer mechanisms and three categories of R & D configurations.   By applying the qualitative strategy with a focus on four case companies (three are from Sweden, one is from China), we conduct a cross case analysis and the result shows that both expatriate management policy and communication frequency are very important knowledge transfer mechanisms for MNC to keep a good knowledge transfer in global R & D operations. In terms of expatriate management policy, it is very important for MNC sending engineers from headquarter to subunits or between peer subunits in order to transfer technology knowledge and facilitate R & D operations. Moreover, send top managers from headquarter to subunits could also help transfer process knowledge and keep overall control of subunits. In terms of communication frequency, if MNC employs a concentrated development in headquarter (or R & D center), it is very important to maintain a frequent communication between headquarter and subunits so as to keep a smooth knowledge transfer between them. And if MNC applies a dispersed research and development configuration, keep a frequent communication between peer subunits is crucial. In addition, this study also found certain connections between innovation process and R & D configurations.

Taiwanese businesses assumed an important role in global supply chain after World War II. But numerous Taiwanese enterprises turn themselves into ODM-oriented ones for more profit because OEM only generates micro profit after companies from China and other developing countries have forged into this market since 1990s. The key to successful transformation lies in capability of independent design and development product. Therefore, developing and improving the capability of R&D talent is the priority to transformation into ODM-oriented company and critical for Taiwan to replay a major role in global supply chain. Therefore, based on competency, we adopted Fuzzy Delphi Method and Analytic Network Process (ANP) to design expert questionnaire and invited R&D experts in ODM-oriented companies to provide advice. The aim was to discover the necessary competencies of R&D employees and weight of each competency in order to construct a competency selection model for R&D employees in ODM-oriented companies and to serve as a reference point for more efficient selection and development of R&D workers. 1.Applying Fuzzy Delphi Method to find out critical competency indicators that is the source of constructing competency selection hierarchy. 2.Applying ANP which is characterized by analysis dependence on or feedback of each indicator to calculate the weight of each competency indicator and constuct a weighted competency selection model for R&D employees in ODM-oriented companies. 3.Confirming that dependence on or feedback of each indicator influences the weight of each indicator. 4.Proving that competency selection model for R&D employees effectively select qualified employees.

During the business cycle, how the firms' marketing expenses affect the stock returns vary with economy condition. Although prior studies have focused on how change in advertising and research and development (R&D) affect firms during recessions, those studies ignored the interaction between advertising and R&D. Besides, prior studies in the economics field find that the macroeconomics factors will affect firm performance. Therefore, this paper investigates which macroeconomics factor will affect firms spending on advertising and R&D to increase stock return of firms during recessions based on controlling the interaction between advertising and R&D. We match the sample of NYSE-, AMEX-, and NASDAQ-listed firms that are specified as ordinary common shares with monthly returns from the Center for Research in Securities Prices (CRSP) and with advertising and R&D from the yearly merged COMPUSTAT data for 1990 to 2010. In addition, we use the Markov switching model to identify economy condition. Meanwhile we use the portfolio analysis to classify the firms into four portfolios and though the macroeconomic model to discuss which factors impact the excess return. This study finds that controlling the condition of R&D-intensive, the default spread and growth in money supply will both affect high advertising firms, more than low advertising firm in recessions. Moreover, controlling the condition of advertising-intensive, the default spread and growth in money supply will both affect high R&D firms more than low R&D firms in recessions. These consequences may result from that during the recession, the default spread will increase and the same time the investors will not prefer high advertising and R&D firms (risky assets). On the other hand, when government implements expansionary monetary policy, investors will prefer high advertising and R&D firms. In summary, this study discuss how the macroeconomic factors affect the excess return of portfolio during recessions based on controlling the interaction between advertising and R&D. Firms could use these results to improve the performances and increase the stock returns by adjusting their spending on advertising and R&D during recessions.

In this dissertation, I develop frameworks and models capturing the effects of marketing capital and R and D capital on firm growth and sustained membership in the Fortune 500 cohort. Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and industrial organization theories, in the first essay, I develop hypotheses on the relationships among a firm's marketing capital, R and D capital, key firm-specific and industry-specific factors and survival as a Fortune 500 firm. I test these hypotheses using a proportional hazard model on a uniquely compiled large panel data set of manufacturing Fortune 500 firms over a 25-year period. The results show that while both marketing and R and D capitals have significant and direct positive associations with survival as a Fortune 500 firm, the moderating effects of industry growth on the relationships between marketing capital and survival as a Fortune 500 firm and between R and D capital and survival as a Fortune 500 firm is asymmetric. It is positive for marketing capital but negative for R and D capital. Thus, to retain firms‘ position on the Fortune 500 list, managers may want to consider investing more in marketing (R and D) when industry growth is high (low). In the second essay, I examine the effect of advertising capital and R and D capital, their complementarities, and their interactions with the environmental contingency factors of dynamism, munificence, and complexity on sales growth, profit growth, and market value growth. Using dynamic panel data analysis of 185 firms over an eight year period (2000-2007), I uncover a nuanced understanding of how advertising and R and D capital affect these performance measures. My results show that both R and D capital and advertising capital directly affect sales growth, but neither has a direct impact on profit growth. Furthermore, R and D capital has a direct impact on market value growth. I also find that while the interaction of advertising capital and R and D capital does not directly affect sales growth or market value growth, it has a positive direct impact on profit growth. Finally, I find that environmental contingencies matter. For instance, environmental dynamism negatively (positively) moderates the relationship between R and D (advertising) capital and sales growth.

¡@¡@At present, the essence situation of biotechnology industries in Taiwan lacks a market-oriented innovation system as sturdy as in advanced countries such as U.S.A., Canada, European Union, and Japan, et cetera. In the technology innovation processes including different gradations such as basic science, application research, technologies development and commercialization, all the R&D of biotechnology industries in Taiwan, ready for a innovation system, many strategies and projects with relation to R&D. However, in the commercialization gradation, having an unremarkable and approximate gap among biotechnology industries, venture capitals, authorities, academia, research institutes and corporations, with reciprocal effects to each other, that are inferior to these advanced countries. ¡@¡@The thesis research in estimating for the R&D performances of biotechnology industries in Taiwan, it makes use of the SPSS l0.0 and AMOS 5.0 for Windows to compute all raw data of sampling survey, after analyzing to demonstrate the structural equation modeling of estimating at the R&D performances of biotechnology industries of Taiwan, that the final result make sure of perfect goodness of fit for the model. The model could be transform into different structures to estimating at the R&D performances of all circles of biotechnology, to make up the gap between anticipated success and unexpected failure. ¡@¡@The conclusion reveals a special significance of business management, means that the R&D innovation system of biotechnology industries of Taiwan, should be operated in coordination with specific strategies and policies of the authorities, then certainty executing all science and technology projects to obtain the R&D performances in essence. In other words, the R&D innovation system of biotech industries of Taiwan still has many demands for investing more human resource, venture capital in R&D, having a well-arranged application for system resources, supplying the market with many well-appropriated laws and regulations, to communicating with international science and technology innovation systems in the world, et cetera. After accomplishing all as above, the R&D prospect of Taiwan¡¦s biotechnology industries will be well in the future.

Continuous research and innovation had played the most important role for an enterprise to maintain his competitive advantage and ensure his sustainability. However, new product life time is getting shorter as known, it¡¦s getting more and more customize-designed products, and the needed technology also upgrade quickly. In order to face the global competition as we are forced to, an enterprise have to develop a new product instantly according to customer need, and take a leading position in the market by well aligning with technology trend, integrating internal & external resources, and best utilizing own core competence. This study designs a framework for a research & development strategy planning and its process management by referring to a new business model. By case study methodology, it had been investigated how a global company practice with the 7 key success factors which had been designed in the framework. These key success factors are : 1.Globalization 2.Customer and partner relationship 3.New product concept and technology 4.Build a effective and more innovative organization 5,Project portfolio management 6.Excellent Business Balanced Scored Card 7.Apply continuous improvement methodology on research management. This study had also investigated the company¡¦s performance on his technology leadership, intellectual property & patent and new product development performance. It can be primary conclusion that a completely integral research & development strategy planning and intensive/systematic research & development process management will do help a enterprise to have competitive advantages. It¡¦s also observed this research & development framework is quite in line with new business model, and all concerned factors and its process are very similar, which means an new business model is also valid for innovation activities of a company, who should consider long term strategy, new product and market scope, differential basis, own core competence and strategic resources, value network of suppliers and partners, global sourcing by joint-development, merge and technology transfer in order to have the needed new technology so that can create the maximum benefit for company.

Many Taiwanese multinational corporation (MNC) increase the proportion of their foreign direct investment in R&D activities year by year. The companies investing in the advanced nations operate R&D activities in the local market obviously. Through this thesis, we desire to know the status of overseas R&D sites in these cases and their motives. Futhermore, we also want to discuss how they build up and operate these R&D sites. Due to much more innovative knowledge resources outside the parent country, Taiwanese companies need to globalize their R&D sites to acquire the R&D results; in addition, establish the network of overseas R&D sites makes MNCs to promote their products in the global market smoothly. However, MNCs have to disperse their corporate resources in diffirent locations, and give each site diffirent roles and tasks. Other important issues among these MNCs are how to manage these dispersed R&D sites to achieve the efficiency and the flexibility and what the strategies they consider. Overseas R&D activity of Taiwanese MNCs is still evolving, and Taiwanese companies have their particular background. In order to find out the causes of this situation, we used the case study approach. We selected the cases which had the complete building process of overseas R&D activities, and interviewed the top managers who had the experiences in the process to gather the materials. Besides, other second-hand materials are also providing us more information to comprehend our sample cases. We found that Taiwanese MNCs had diffirent motives in each stage. They need to respond to local market, and provide the commercial products rapidly. In addition, local technology and human resource are also the important wealth to strengthen headquarters¡¦ R&D capabilities. Under the consideration of speed, cost and competition, MNCs integrated the R&D resources of parent and host countries aggressively, and they had to think how to match the corporate strategy. Further, they tried to manage organizational information flows and coordinate these R&D activities. Moreover, using several kinds of communication patterns helps headquarters to understand and control overseas R&D activities, and makes R&D knowledge and experiences circulate inside the organization to stimulate organizational innovative capacity.