After excluding four invalid responses, the total number of valid sample firms is 165, a 40% response rate for this study. This study uses a one-way ANOVA test to examine the difference among the three sub-samples in terms of firm age and sales. The result shows that the three sub-sample groups are not significantly different (firm
age: F=1.53, p N 0.1; sales: F= 1.76, p N 0.1), suggesting no sample selection bias in this research. As for patent data, this study collects them ia the governmental agent database, Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO), MOEA, in Taiwan.