We explore the impact of research and development (R&D) on sales growth rate with firm-specific factors under the Korean pharmaceutical industry structure using listed Korea pharmaceutical company data from 2007 to 2018 with the quantile regression technique. We find that R&D intensity has a positive effect on firm growth rate while R&D scale a negative effect on the firm growth rate at the upper quantile, whereas the result is opposite at the lower quantile. Firm size has a mixed relationship with sales growth at the upper quantile, thus Gibrat’s law is rejected in the Korean pharmaceutical industry. Firm age has a negative relationship with the sales growth rate at the upper quantile, which shows the consistent result with previous research that young firms grow faster. Patent persistence has a negative relationship with sales growth at the upper quantile, while a positive effect at the lower quantile. We show that young firms and firms with high R&D intensity contribute to the high growth rate, while the relationship is not clear at the lower quantile. Therefore, policy implication in this research is that the government should pay attention to encouraging and supporting R&D investment activities and small firms as well as consider ways to enhance patent rights.

The modern semiconductor industry is going through rapid changes as new markets and technologies appear. In this paper, such technology-intensive firms’ relationship between technological capability and financial performance is analyzed with regression analysis. Revenue and market capitalization are used as dependent variables. For the independent variables, the technological intensity, technological diversity, technological asset, and technological efficiency are used. The analysis results revealed different effects of technological capability on financial performance. Also, regression analysis is conducted by dividing firms into high and low groups based on technological asset and technological efficiency, and the analysis result revealed different effects of technological intensity and technological diversity on financial performance. For technological asset, the financial performance in the high group is affected more by technological intensity, and the financial performance in the low group is affected more by technological diversity. For technological efficiency, only the financial performance in the high group is affected by technological intensity. Although both groups’ financial performance is somewhat affected by technological diversity, there was no statistically significant differences between the groups. By separating the effect of technological capability on financial performance, this research can provide more detailed analysis results compared to previous literature and the methods of managing technological capability for semiconductor firms.