過去數十年來，伴隨著資通訊產業的快速發展，創新活動逐漸成為了加強競爭優勢的重要來源。因此，對於科技公司而言，評估創新相關的生產力也逐漸成為了當今重要的課題，且由於軟體產業被視為典型的科技產業，因此創新活動的評估，對於軟體公司更形重要。 本研究使用資料包絡法(Data envelopment analysis)評估八家美國軟體公司在創新活動與將創新產出轉換成財務績效上的效率，同時，對於兩效率之間的關係也將進一步檢驗。此外，本研究亦使用麥氏生產力指數(Malmquist Productivity Index)從整體產業與公司的層面評估跨期的效率變動。本研究的主要發現指出:在創新效率與財務效率上有效率之公司與無效率公司之間存在高度的差異性;大部分公司在創新效率上表現優於財務效率;美國軟體產業在創新上的整體效率在2003-2005呈現進步但在2005-2007退步;美國軟體產業在2003-2007的財務效率上呈現大幅的進步。Innovation activities have become an important source to enhance competitive advantages with rapid development of information and commutation technology over past decades. Thus, measuring the productivity with respect to innovation for technology-based firms becomes a crucial issue nowadays. Especially, it is critical for software industry because this industry is conventionally viewed as a typical technology-based sector. To further understand the innovation insights of the software industry, this study not only assessed the innovation efficiency of eight major U.S. software firms but also investigated how their innovation outputs were transferred into financial performance (financial efficiency) by using the approach of data envelopment analysis . The relationship between innovation efficiency and financial efficiency is also examined in this study. In addition, Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) was employed to analyze the efficiency change based on the scopes of industry and individual firm. Analysis results show that significant differences exist between efficient firms and non-efficient firms from the viewpoints of innovation efficiency and financial efficiency. Besides, most of companies were found to have better performance of innovation efficiency than financial efficiency. The findings of MPI show that U.S. software industry made productivity improvements during the periods of 2003-2004 and 2004-2005. However, their MPI performances showed reversals during the periods of 2005-2006 and 2006-2007. Generally speaking, U.S. software firms substantially made improvements in transferring innovation outputs to financial performance during 2003-2007 from the viewpoint of MPI.
