An efficiency analysis of innovation activity and financial performance of U.S. computer software companies

• Main Authors: Sheng-Chiang Weng, 翁聖強
• Other Authors: Chien-wen Shen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/27856177638882943394

碩士 === 國立中央大學 === 企業管理研究所 === 100 === Innovation activities have become an important source to enhance competitive advantages with rapid development of information and commutation technology over past decades. Thus, measuring the productivity with respect to innovation for technology-based firms becomes a crucial issue nowadays. Especially, it is critical for software industry because this industry is conventionally viewed as a typical technology-based sector. To further understand the innovation insights of the software industry, this study not only assessed the innovation efficiency of eight major U.S. software firms but also investigated how their innovation outputs were transferred into financial performance (financial efficiency) by using the approach of data envelopment analysis . The relationship between innovation efficiency and financial efficiency is also examined in this study. In addition, Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) was employed to analyze the efficiency change based on the scopes of industry and individual firm. Analysis results show that significant differences exist between efficient firms and non-efficient firms from the viewpoints of innovation efficiency and financial efficiency. Besides, most of companies were found to have better performance of innovation efficiency than financial efficiency. The findings of MPI show that U.S. software industry made productivity improvements during the periods of 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. However, their MPI performances showed reversals during the periods of 2005-2006 and 2006-2007. Generally speaking, U.S. software firms substantially made improvements in transferring innovation outputs to financial performance during 2003-2007 from the viewpoint of MPI.