• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.155-195
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• 2017

The goal of the present study is reviewing the literature on the scientific community and also on science, technology & society to increase interactions between innovation studies and social studies of science and technology. Up until now, various empirical studies on Korean scientists and engineers have been concentrated on researchers at universities, while they have paid inadequate attention to researchers at state-funded research institutes and private companies. In addition, these studies have tended to use concepts in Western academia to elucidate Korean cases. On the other hand, recent empirical researches on the effects of the evaluation systems in universities, PBS system, and the network of school ties suggest that these topics may reveal the unique characteristics of Korean scientific community. Empirical studies on the scientific community have also shown that Korean research institutes and researchers who are in charge of innovation in Korea have demonstrated a tendency to conform to the government's guidance due to long experiences of state-led R&D and nationalism. Research on science, technology and society has viewed the participation of citizens in science and technology as a way toward science and technology democracy, and tended to have a strong practical orientation. However, there has been a relatively small amount of research on how citizen participation influences the direction and content of technological innovation. Also, although, from the viewpoint of technological innovation, how participation of citizens in science and technology can contribute to knowledge production and innovation is a critical issue, relatively small numbers of case studies on this subject have been conducted. Therefore, as the scholars who have emphasized the democracy of science and technology have actually experimented with various ways of citizen participation, innovation researchers may have to design and implement citizen participation through which citizens' local knowledge can contribute to technological innovation.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.55-73
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• 2024

Unicorn companies are attracting attention around the world as they are recognized for their high corporate value in a short period of time as an innovative business models. Their growth process presents good lessons for the startup ecosystem and have a positive impact on national economic development and job creation. However, previous studies related to unicorn companies are focused on 'event studies' and 'case studies' such as characteristics of founders, environmental factors, business models and success/failure cases of companies already recognized as unicorns rather than a multifaceted approach. The occurrence of unicorn companies and Macroscopic analysis of related factors is lacking. Against this background, this study are considering the characteristics of unicorns examined through previous research and the current status unicorns with a high proportion of technology companies, the purpose was to analyze the impact of the country's technological competitiveness, such as 'technology human resource index', 'R&D index', and 'technology infrastructure index', on the increase in unicorn companies. For statistical analysis, data published by various international organizations, the Bank of Korea, and Statistics Korea from 2017 to 2020 and unicorn company data compiled by CB Insights were used as panel data for 44 countries to be tested by multiple regression analysis. As a result of the study, it was confirmed that the number of science majors had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies in the case of technology human resource index, and in the case of R&D index, the total amount of R&D investment had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies, while the number of Triad Patents Families and the number of scientific and technological papers published had a negative (-) effect on the increase of unicorn companies. Finally, in the case of technology infrastructure index, it was confirmed that the number of the world's 500th-ranked universities had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies. This study is the first to reveal the causal relationship between national technological competitiveness and unicorn company growth based on country-specific and time-series empirical data, which were insufficiently covered in previous studies. and compared to the UN's ranking of the global industrial competitiveness index and the OECD's total R&D investment by country, Korea is considered to have technological and growth potential, while the number of unicorn companies driving growth as leaders of the innovative economy is relatively small, so the research results can be used when establishing policies to discover and foster unicorn companies in the future.