Adoption of emerging technologies and growth of manufacturing firms: the importance of technology types and corporate entrepreneurship

This study explores the impact of adopting emerging Industry 4.0 technologies on firm growth by analysing a panel dataset of Korean manufacturing firms. It finds that the impact differs depending on the types of technology implementation (including purpose and applications) and corporate entrepreneurship. In general, adopting front-end technologies for advanced manufacturing increases firm growth and adopting base technologies for advanced digitalisation reduces firm growth in the existing business. However, when firms develop a new business, adopting base technologies positively influences their growth and adopting front-end technologies negatively affects firm growth.