Productivity improvement is one of the important goals which firms’ technology developments aim at. Firms’ improved productivity from technology development means that their inputs can produce more outputs through technology development, which makes firms’ productivity improvement from technology development more and more important in the age of technology advance and convergence like today. This research empirically analyzes the influence of the external technology collaboration network diversity on the productivity improvement of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from technology development and the moderating effect of the chief technology officer (CTO)-driven technology development on this influence. This study constructs the research model reflecting the moderating impact of the CTO-driven technology development and tests it with the ordinary least squares regression through the IBM SPSS version 23 by using the 2,000 data about South Korean SMEs. This research empirically reveals two points. One is that SMEs’ external technology collaboration network diversity has a positive influence on their productivity improvement from technology development. The other is that the positive effect of SMEs’ external technology collaboration network diversity on their productivity improvement from technology development is moderated by the CTO-driven technology development. The two points revealed in this study present two meaningful implications in not only the practical but also academic point of view. The practical implication is that it is effective for SMEs to use CTOs in increasing their productivity improvement from technology development. The academic implication is that making technology collaboration with more diverse external partners can increase SMEs’ productivity improvement from technology development.

This study empirically analyzes the effect of IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity on their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development. This research constructs a mediating model based on the open innovation perspective and tests it with the 138 samples of South Korean IT SME ventures based on the ordinary least squares regression. This research is expected to make a good contribution by shedding a new light on the following three points about the critical role of IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity in increasing their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development which has scarcely been illuminated in the extant studies in the field of the management of technology for SMEs. First, IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity positively influences their production period reduction. Second, the external information network diversity positively influences IT SMEs’ ventures’ productivity improvement. Third, IT SME ventures’ production period reduction partially mediates the influence of IT SME ventures’ external network diversity on their productivity improvement. These three fresh points are expected to provide useful theoretical and practical implications. Related to the theoretical implication, this research provides a fresh implication that IT SME ventures’ external information network diversity positively influences not only their production period reduction but also productivity improvement generated from technology development. Concerning the practical implication, this study suggests that the CEOs in IT SME ventures make strategic efforts to use more diverse external information sources in order to increase their production period reduction and productivity improvement generated from technology development.