The growth and employment effects of R&D investment were analyzed according to business size, export value and manufacturing sectors so as to suggest improvement directions for effective industry policies. The effect of R&D investment was considered simultaneously from the two perspectives of growth and employment effect, and the causality analysis was carried out by using a path analysis. The result of the path analysis confirmed significant differences in the growth effect of R&D investment depending on business size. However, the effect of increasing employment was difficult to obtain statistically significant results for any various combinations of business size and export value. This is a mixture of directions for the effects of R&D investment on employment, which could be due to the failure to consider appropriate time lags between investment and effect. Efficiency analysis by industry sectors confirmed significant differences in efficiency depending on business size, but differences depending on export value were difficult to identify. In order to derive improvement policy by industry sector according to business size and export value, the direction of selective support policy and universal support policy was derived for six industry groups by combining the return to scale in the efficiency analysis and R&D concentration. Hirschman-Herfindahl index is used for calculating R&D concentration.

As the technological gap amongst manufacturers decreases, the life cycle of products has shortened, and competition accelerates due to the development of technology, incumbent manufacturing companies face growth limitations. In order to overcome such business issues, manufacturing companies are increasingly interested in changes in business models and innovations, especially in the direction of providing services where they can maintain the competitive advantage of their products. In such context, this empirical study examines managerial leadership, differentiation strategies, and products and services pricing as ‘servitization factors’, which can be driving forces for moving into a new era of growth for Korean SMEs, focusing on the mediating effects of servitization competency. The results are as follows : First, it was confirmed that executive leadership, differentiation strategy, and information & communication technology capability have a direct effect on service sales. Second, the process competency, partnership competency, and ICT competency, which are presented as the service competence of SMEs, were found to play an important role in inducing service sales in managerial leadership, differentiation strategy, product and services pricing. It also emphasized the role of the public policy such as helping to foster SMEs as key partners in the expansion of social facilities and establishing platforms through ICT and data utilization for the convergence of manufacturing services.