Global competition has increased the importance of patents as a means to protect and strengthen technology and competitiveness. The purposes of our study were to identify what industries in South Korea are strong or weak in terms of patent applications and to identify some strategies to enable weak industries to become strong. For this, we gathered statistics on seven variables as follows: number of businesses, number of employees, research and development investment, number of full-time equivalent researchers, number of research institutions, domestic market size, and number of patent applications. Especially, to compare the ratio of patent applications and the ratio of domestic market size across industries, the industries were classified into the following three categories: strong-, weak-, and no-patent. Furthermore, data envelopment analysis (DEA) suggested some strategies to strengthen patent applications for each industry. In the DEA analysis, the number of patent applications was used as the output variable and the other six variables were used as input variables. Our study will particularly assist industries where protection by patents is an important aspect of their businesses.

Precision medicine has received a lot of attention in recent years and we have not yet found any research cases that apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to investment decision making in this area. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relative efficiency of candidate technology sectors in order to determine priorities for government investment in precision medicine. The results of the efficiency analysis can be used as an important reference for government policy makers to determine the amount of government investment in the next year for each candidate technology sector. The candidate technology for government investment in precision medicine was decided for 23 sectors based on the data analysis and the opinions of expert committees. This study applies the input-oriented DEA in regard to 23 technology sectors, which is widely used to analyze relative efficiency in terms of inputs versus outputs and to enhance efficiency through the propositional reduction of inputs. The input variables include the government’s research and development (R&D) investment and forward and backward industry linkage effects. The output variables are the employment creation effect, value-added effect, number of Korean patents, and number of Korean papers. Our analysis results show that the 23 technology sectors in precision medicine overall have a high efficiency, with the exception of the biobank technology sector. Therefore, since the Biobank technology sector has strong infrastructure characteristics, it seems to require continuous investment. The efficiency of DEA is high in most precision medicine sectors; therefore, overall, investing in these technologies is expected to yield good benefits.

This study reevaluates criticism of the Korean government’s R&D investment strategy, which was considered an ’R&D cartel’ and was cited as a reason for the Korean government’s R&D cuts in 2023, through an advanced framework of quantum game theory. By modeling the interaction between the government and researchers as a quantum information strategy game, it redefines the dynamics of R&D investment as a quantum game involving two key players: the R&D manager (Alice) and the research performer (Bob). This quantum game, akin to the Prisoner’s Dilemma but focused on responsibility and sincerity, allows for the exploration of strategic complexities and decision-making dynamics not possible in classical models. It introduces quantum entanglement and superposition as innovative strategies to shift the paradigm of R&D investment, suggesting that terms like ’R&D bureaucracy’ and ’R&D monopoly’ more accurately describe the moral hazards in this sector than ’R&D cartel’. Through simulations, the paper demonstrates how quantum strategies can significantly alter outcomes, providing fresh insights and policy alternatives for R&D innovation. This research not only challenges conventional investment frameworks but also proposes a novel approach for achieving Pareto optimal outcomes in government R&D investments, emphasizing the transformative potential of quantum game theory in strategic decision-making and policy development.