This study emphasizes R&D as a management strategy for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) to achieve competitive advantage and aims to analyze the impact of innovation resistance, prior knowledge, and technological capability on the intention to adopt R&D. The research targeted 403 decision-makers from SMEs that have not adopted R&D. The analysis revealed the following key findings: As a result, both technical capabilities and prior knowledge had a negative effect on innovation resistance. In addition, technological capabilities and prior knowledge had a positive effect on adoption intention, and innovation resistance had a negative effect on acceptance intention. The indirect effects of technical capabilities and prior knowledge both had a positive impact. In addition, we tested whether dependency on partners and trading organizations that accepted R&D had a moderating effect, but it was not significant. The academic implications of this study provide a detailed analysis of how prior knowledge and technological capability affect innovation resistance in SMEs and verify the intention to adopt R&D. The practical implications suggest a direction for small and medium-sized enterprises to reduce innovation resistance in accepting R&D, and companies need to recognize the suitability of R&D and recognize the importance of technological capabilities and prior knowledge in order to reduce innovation resistance.