How does technology catch-up experience affect innovation performance of latecomer firms?: Evidence from the Korea pharmaceutical industry

Drawing on the technological learning model of latecomer firms (LCFs) and the literature on catch-up, this paper examines how accumulated internal R&D investment, foreign technology in-licensing experience, and creative imitation experience independently and interactively affect innovation by LCFs. We showed that LCFs' accumulated internal R&D investment and creative imitation experience have a positive impact on their innovation, respectively. However, LCFs' creative imitation experience weakens the positive relationship between accumulated internal R&D investment and innovation, implying the paradoxical effect of LCFs' creative imitation strategy on their innovation. Using the unique panel dataset on drugs developed by Korean pharmaceutical firms between 1999 and 2019, we find evidence that generally supports our hypotheses.