This study empirically explores the relationship between innovation performance and the internal and contextual factors driving technological innovation in manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in metropolitan areas of Korea using structural equation modeling (SEM). Our analysis is based on firm-level data from the Korean Innovation Survey conducted by the Science and Technology Policy Institute in 2012. According to the results, SMEs’ innovation capacity was positively related to technological innovation performance, and SMEs’ skills and technology acquisition is a contextual factor that positively influences their innovation performance. In this process, SMEs’ innovation capacity is a partial mediator between skills and technology acquisition and SMEs’ technological innovation performance. Moreover, the results show that the relationship between government and public policies and SMEs’ innovation performance is mediated by SMEs’ internal innovation capacity. The results imply that both skills and technology acquisition and government and public policies are important contextual factors can increase SMEs’ innovation performance. Based on the results, this study provides implications for policy makers in terms of the policies that provide both direct and support roles in fostering and sustaining innovation, which drives regional economic growth and development.

This study empirically investigates the effects of a regional creative milieu on the migration inflows and outflows of the highly educated between urbanized areas in Korea. To estimate the push and pull effects, we use the 5% Population and Housing Census (2005) and employ a hierarchical cross-classified linear model as an empirical modeling framework. The graduate migration between areas is generally affected by regional and individual characteristics. To this effect, the literature suggests that highly-educated individuals tend to significantly value diverse and creative regional amenities in migration decision making. Our results reveal that, regarding the push and pull effect for the highly educated, talent and tolerance in a region and a high level of the creativity index in a region are likely to increase the likelihood of in-migration and decrease that of out-migration by lowering the barriers to entry for the highly educated. Our findings emphasize the role of regions with well-established amenities as a creative milieu for attracting the highly educated and, thus, have significant implications for sustainable regional development policies.