Balancing Innovation and Commercialization: Conditional Resource Allocation and Firm Performance

How should high-tech firms allocate resources between innovation and commercialization activities? Previous studies emphasize balancing or orchestrating complementary investments, yet different resource domains may not create value through equivalent mechanisms. Using dual-period panel data from Taiwanese high-tech firms (2007–2012 and 2019–2024), this study applies random-effects generalized least squares regressions to examine how research and development (R&D) and marketing allocations relate to firm performance under three internal resource configurations: slack, parent–subsidiary similarity and business-group diversification. R&D allocation is positively associated with performance, whereas marketing allocation has no uniform direct effect and becomes more effective when resource slack is available. Resource similarity does not significantly moderate either allocation-performance relationship, while diversification weakens the returns to R&D. These findings support an asymmetric resource effectiveness framework in which innovation-oriented investments operate primarily through cumulative capability development, whereas commercialization-oriented investments depend more on value appropriation and supportive organizational conditions. The study extends the resource-based view by specifying how the effectiveness of strategic investments varies across resource domains and internal configurations.