• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2021

As the Great Reset is discussed at the World Economic Forum due to the COVID-19 pandemic, artificial intelligence, the driving force of the 4th industrial revolution, is also in the spotlight. However, corporate research in the field of artificial intelligence is still scarce. Since 2000, related research has focused on how to create value by applying artificial intelligence to existing companies, and research on how startups seize opportunities and enter among existing businesses to create new value can hardly be found. Therefore, this study analyzed the cases of startups using the comprehensive framework of the multi-level perspective with the research question of how artificial intelligence based startups, a sub-industry of software, have different innovation patterns from the existing software industry. The target firms are gazelle firms that have been certified as venture firms in South Korea, as start-ups within 7 years of age, specializing in machine learning modeling purposively sampled in the medical, finance, marketing/advertising, e-commerce, and manufacturing fields. As a result of the analysis, existing software companies have achieved process innovation from an enterprise-wide integration perspective, in contrast machine learning technology based startups identified unit processes that were difficult to automate or create value by dismantling existing processes, and automate and optimize those processes based on data. The contribution of this study is to analyse the birth of artificial intelligence-based startups and their innovation patterns while validating the framework of an integrated multi-level perspective. In addition, since innovation is driven based on data, the ability to respond to data-related regulations is emphasized even for start-ups, and the government needs to eliminate the uncertainty in related systems to create a predictable and flexible business environment.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.131-144
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• 2021

The organizational ambidexterity is an organizational strategy designed to pursue exploration activities to seize new opportunities and exploitation activities to efficiently use resources. Most of these ambidextrous structures have been studied for large corporations with slack resources, and there are still not many studies on the necessity of an ambidextrous structure for startups with relatively low-level resources. However, recently, the startup ecosystem is being advanced globally, and the amount of VC investment is rapidly increasing. This is a time when a lot of venture fund is invested in startups and a startup-friendly environment for rapid growth is created. This is the time to discuss the necessity and applicability of an ambidextrous organizational structure for startups. Therefore, this study conducted a hypothesis test whether the importance and necessity of balance that startups solving market problems with new ideas and utilizing accumulated resources have. To conduct this study, we analyzed 140 startups data gathered from the survey and the moderation effect was also analyzed. As a result of the study, it was verified that the balance of startup exploration and exploitation had a significant effect on startup performance, and the moderating effect of environmental dynamics was found to have a significant effect on the relationship with non-financial performance. Therefore, for startups with insufficient resources, it was concluded that the surplus resources generated in the process of a firm's growth should be effectively utilized and the balance between exploration and exploitation should be balanced from the initial stage of searching for a new business. In other words, it was confirmed that it is important for continuous growth and survival to seek the structure of an ambidextrous organization in order to internalize a mechanism that enables startups to pursue both effectiveness and efficiency in the long term. This study suggests a strategic direction for the growth of startups from the perspective of organizational structure. We expect that this meaningful results on the relationship between the ambidextrous capabilities of startups and performance contribute to the growth of startups in the rapidly growing startup venture environment.