• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.53-76
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• 2005

With rapid technological and market change, new product development (NPD) complexity is a significant issue that organizations continually face in their development projects. There are numerous factors, which cause development projects to become increasingly costly & complex. A product is more likely to be successfully developed and marketed when the complexity inherent in NPD projects is clearly understood and carefully managed. Based upon the previous studies, this study examines the nature and importance of complexity in developing new products and then identifies several issues in managing complexity. Issues considered include: definition of complexity : consequences of complexity; and methods for managing complexity in NPD projects. To achieve high performance in managing complexity in development projects, these issues need to be addressed, for example: A. Complexity inherent in NPD projects is multi-faceted and multidimensional. What factors need to be considered in defining and/or measuring complexity in a development project? For example, is it sufficient if complexity is defined only from a technological perspective, or is it more desirable to consider the entire array of complexity sources which NPD teams with different functions (e.g., marketing, R&D, manufacturing, etc.) face in the development process? Moreover, is it sufficient if complexity is measured only once during a development project, or is it more effective and useful to trace complexity changes over the entire development life cycle? B. Complexity inherent in a project can have negative as well as positive influences on NPD performance. Thus, which complexity impacts are usually considered negative and which are positive? Project complexity also can affect the entire organization. Any complexity could be better assessed in broader and longer perspective. What are some ways in which the long-term impact of complexity on an organization can be assessed and managed? C. Based upon previous studies, several approaches for managing complexity are derived. What are the weaknesses & strengths of each approach? Is there a desirable hierarchy or order among these approaches when more than one approach is used? Are there differences in the outcomes according to industry and product types (incremental or radical)? Answers to these and other questions can help organizations effectively manage the complexity inherent in most development projects. Complexity is worthy of additional attention from researchers and practitioners alike. Large-scale empirical investigations, jointly conducted by researchers and practitioners, will help gain useful insights into understanding and managing complexity. Those organizations that can accurately identify, assess, and manage the complexity inherent in projects are likely to gain important competitive advantages.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.53-81
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• 2010

Brand experience has received much attention from considerable marketing research. When consumers consume and use brands, they are exposed to various specific brand-related stimuli. These brand-related stimuli include brand identity and brand communications(e.g., colors, shapes, designs, slogans, mascots, brand characters) components. Brakus, Schmitt, and Zarantonello(2009) conceptualized brand experience as subjective and internal consumer responses evoked by brand-related stimuli. They demonstrated that brand experience can be broken down into four dimensions(sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral). Because experiences result from stimulations and lead to pleasurable outcomes, we expect consumers to want to repeat theses experiences. That is, brand experiences, stored in consumer memory, should affect brand loyalty. Consumers with positive experiences should be more likely to buy a brand again and less likely to buy an alternative brand(Fournier 1998; Oliver 1997). Brand attachment, one of dimensions of the consumer-brand relationship, is defined as an emotional bond to the specific brand(Thomson, MacInnis, and Park 2005). Brand attachment is target-specific bond between the consumer and the specific brand. Thus, strong attachment is attended by a rich set of schema that link the brand to the consumer. Previous researches propose that brand attachments should affect consumers' commitment to the brand. Brand experience differs from affective construct such as brand attachment. Brand attachment is based on interaction between a consumer and the brand. In contrast, brand experience occurs whenever there is a direct and indirect interaction with the brand. Furthermore, brand experience is not an emotional relationship concept. Brakus et al.(2009) suggest that brand experience may result in brand attachment. This study aims to distinguish brand experience dimensions and investigate the effects of brand experience on brand attachment and brand commitment. We test research problems with data from 265 customers having brand experiences in various product categories by using multiple regression and structural equation model. The empirical results can be summarized as follows. First, the paths from affective, behavior, and intellectual experience to the brand attachment were found to be positively significant whereas the effect of sensory experience to brand attachment was not supported. In the consumer literature, sensory experiences for consumers are often equated with aesthetic pleasure. Over time, these pleasure experiences can affect consumer satisfaction. However, sensory pleasures are not linked to attachment such as consumers' strong emotional bond(i.e., hot affect). These empirical results confirms the results of previous studies. Second, brand attachment including passion and connection influences brand commitment positively but affection does not influence brand commitment. In marketing context, consumers with brand attachment have intention to have a willingness to stay with the relationship. The results also imply that consumers' emotional attachment is characterized by a set of brand experience dimensions and consumers who are emotionally attached to the brand are committed. The findings of this research contribute to develop differences between brand experience and brand attachment and to provide practical implications on the brand experience management. Recently, many brand managers have focused on short-term view. According to this study, we suggest that effective brand experience management requires taking a long-term view of marketing decisions.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.1-25
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• 2011

Brand names are often considered as a part of product and important extrinsic cues of product evaluation, when consumers make purchasing decisions. For a company, brand names are also important assets. Building a strong brand name in the Chinese commonwealth is a main challenge for many global companies. One of the first problem global company has to face is how to translate English brand name into Chinese brand name. It is very difficult decision because of cultural and linguistic differences. Western languages are based on an alphabet phonetic system, whereas Chinese are based on ideogram. Chinese speakers are more likely to recall stimuli presented as brand names in visual rather than spoken recall, whereas English speakers are more likely to recall the names in spoken rather than in visual recall. We interpret these findings in terms of the fact that mental representations of verbal information in Chinese are coded primarily in a visual manner, whereas verbal information in English is coded by primarily in a phonological manner. A key linguistic differences that would affect the decision to standardize or localize when transferring English brand name to Chinese brand name is the writing system. Prior Chinese brand naming research suggests that popular Chinese naming translations foreign companies adopt are phonetic, semantic, and phonosemantic translation. The phonetic translation refers to the speech sound that is produced, such as the pronunciation of the brand name. The semantic translation involves the actual meaning of and association made with the brand name. The phonosemantic translation preserves the sound of the brand name and brand meaning. Prior brand naming research has dealt with word-level analysis in examining English brand name that are desirable for improving memorability. We predict Chinese brand name suggestiveness with different translation methods lead to different levels of consumers' evaluations. This research investigates the structural linguistic characteristics of the Chinese language and its impact on the brand name evaluation. Otherwise purpose of this study is to examine the effect of brand concept on the evaluation of brand name. We also want to examine whether the evaluation is moderated by Chinese translation types. 178 Taiwanese participants were recruited for the research. The following findings are from the empirical analysis on the hypotheses established in this study. In the functional brand concept, participants in Chinese translation by semantic were likely to evaluate positively than Chinese translation by phonetic. On the contrary, in the symbolic brand concept condition, participants in Chinese translation by phonetic evaluated positively than by semantic. And then, we found Chinese translation by phonosemantic was most favorable evaluations regardless of brand concept. The implications of these findings are discussed for Chinese commonwealth marketers with respect to brand name strategies. The proposed model helps companies to effectively select brand name, making it highly applicable for academia and practitioner. name and brand meaning. Prior brand naming research has dealt with word-level analysis in examining English brand name that are desirable for improving memorability. We predict Chinese brand name suggestiveness with different translation methods lead to different levels of consumers' evaluations. This research investigates the structural linguistic characteristics of the Chinese language and its impact on the brand name evaluation. Otherwise purpose of this study is to examine the effect of brand concept on the evaluation of brand name. We also want to examine whether the evaluation is moderated by Chinese translation types. 178 Taiwanese participants were recruited for the research. The following findings are from the empirical analysis on the hypotheses established in this study. In the functional brand concept, participants in Chinese translation by semantic were likely to evaluate positively than Chinese translation by phonetic. On the contrary, in the symbolic brand concept condition, participants in Chinese translation by phonetic evaluated positively than by semantic. And then, we found Chinese translation by phonosemantic was most favorable evaluations regardless of brand concept. The implications of these findings are discussed for Chinese commonwealth marketers with respect to brand name strategies. The proposed model helps companies to effectively select brand name, making it highly applicable for academia and practitioner.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.17-30
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the characteristics of start-up CEOs on the performance of investment attraction from the perspective of Series A investment. The results of the study are as follows. First, when the educational level of start-up CEOs was high and startup CEOs had start-up experience and investment attraction experience, venture investors such as venture capital had a significantly positive (+) effect on the investment for start-ups. This was systematically significantly positive even when control variables were introduced. When start-up CEOs had work experiences, there was no significantly positive effect on the total investment amount for start-ups but a significantly positive (+) effect on the average investment amount. Second, the standardization coefficient of total investment amount was larger in the case of start-up experience than that in the case of investment attraction experience while the standardization coefficient of average investment amount was larger in the case of investment attraction experience than that in the case of start-up experience. This suggests that the start-up experience is important for the total investment amount while the investment attraction experience is important for the average investment amount. Third, when the sales of start-ups were high at the time of Series A investment, the total investment amount and the average investment amount were also significantly high. Even if early start-ups are less profitable or have losses, the start-ups with a certain level of sales seem to be attractive investment targets for venture capital. The results of this study are useful for the investment decisions of venture capital and the financing strategies of start-ups. The implications for pre-CEOs preparing for start-ups art that the total amount of investment will increase if they have expertise through degree acquisition, challenge start-ups, gain start-up experience and implement investment attraction. Even if CEOs of start-ups do not have start-up experience, the average amount of investment for start-ups can increase if they have work experience in related industries.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.105-114
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of the nation's institutional environment on start-up intention of employees and the mediating role of risk-taking propensity in the relationship between these variables. This study classified the institutional environment into institutional profile regulation, institutional profile norms, and institutional profile recognition. The research data were collected through questionnaires for office workers belonging to domestic companies, and 322 copies of questionnaire data were used for hypothesis verification, except for questionnaires that were omitted or unfaithful. The results of this study are as follows. First, institutional profile regulations and norms were positively related to start-up intention of office workers, while institutional profile cognition had no significant effect on the start-up intention. Second, institutional profile regulations and norms were positively related to risk taking, while institutional profile cognition had no significant effect on risk taking. Finally, risk taking was found to partially mediate the relationship between institutional profile regulation and start-up intention, and completely mediate the relationship between institutional profile norms and start-up intention. The theoretical implications of this study are as follows. First, this study makes a theoretical contribution in that it revealed that the country institutional profile regulation and norms are important prerequisites for start-up intention and risk taking. Next, unlike previous studies, this study makes a theoretical contribution by presenting a start-up intention model of office workers consisting of perception of the institutional environment and risk taking, which is the individual characteristic of entrepreneurs. The practical implications of this study are as follows. First, the government and local governments should strengthen regulations on institutional profiles so that start-ups can be activated. Second, the government and local governments should strengthen the norms for institutional profiles so that start-ups can be activated. Finally, the government, local governments, and educational institutions should devise measures to strengthen the risk taking of start-ups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.159-174
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• 2022

Entrepreneurs should continuously invest resource and capital for a long time to get tangible business results. In order to be successful, despite difficulties, it is essential for entrepreneurs to continue entrepreneurial businesses without giving up too early. Thus, it can be said that organizational commitment of entrepreneurs is essential for success. According to previous studies, the organizational commitment of entrepreneurs has a significant effect on organizing, establishments of new firms and new product developments. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationships among learning orientation, innovativeness and organizational commitment of entrepreneurs. Especially, we focus on the mediating effect of innovativeness in the relationship between learning orientation and organizational commitment and the moderating effect of career relevance among the relationships. Based on empirical analysis, we reported the following results. First, learning orientation, innovativeness and career relevance of entrepreneurs had significant positive effects on organizational commitment. Second, it was found that innovativeness of entrepreneurs has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between learning orientation and organizational commitment. Third, using Baron & Kenny's hierarchical multiple regression analysis, we examined the moderating effect of career relevance among the relationships of learning orientation, innovativeness and organizational commitment. Third, because the interaction term was found to be positively significant, it was concluded there is a moderating effect of career relevance between learning orientation and innovativeness. This means, when career relevance was higher than average, the influence of learning orientation on innovation increases even more. Fourth, it was also found there is a moderating effect of career relevance between learning orientation and organizational commitment. However, the results of the mediated moderating effect analysis showed the moderating effect of career relevance between learning orientation and organization commitment is an indirect effect of moderating effect of career relevance between learning orientation and innovativeness mediated by innovativeness.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.33-44
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• 2023

Entrepreneurial self-efficacy is an important variable that explains people's attitudes and behaviors toward start-ups. In this study, we focused on individual psychological characteristics variables such as luck in belief and positive cognitive bias that affect entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Among these variables, we paid particular attention to luck in belief. The belief that business success depends on luck is widespread, but scientific verification about it has not been much. The reason for the academic indifference is that luck is a kind of superstition, related to precognition or extrasensory perception, and randomly caused by the external environment. The study of luck began in earnest as a measure to measure luck as an individual characteristic variable such as personality was developed. The purpose of this study is to examine the existing studies on luck in belief and to examine the effect of this luck in belief on positive cognitive bias and entrepreneurial self-efficacy through empirical analysis. For empirical analysis, this study conducted an on-line survey of 400 ordinary people and conducted a structural equation model analysis using AMOS 21.0 to verify the hypothesis. As a result of hypothesis testing, all hypotheses that luck in belief would have a positive effect on positive cognitive bias(self-enhancement bias, illusion of control bias, unrealism optimistic bias) were adopted. The hypothesis that positive cognitive bias(self-enhancement bias, illusion of control bias, unrealistic optimism bias) will have a positive effect on entrepreneurial self-efficacy was also adopted. Additional analysis was conducted to examine the mediating role of positive cognitive bias in the relationship between luck in belief and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which showed that 'luck in belief→positive cognitive bias →entrepreneurial self-efficacy' were statistically significant. Through this, we confirmed the mediating effect of positive cognitive bias in the relationship between luck in belief and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. In the conclusion, the implications and limitations of the study were presented based on the results of this study.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.81-94
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• 2022

This study analyzed the effect of the entrepreneurship planning course provided by an women's university in Seoul on the enhancement of the core competencies of entrepreneurship of university students. To this end, pre- and post-test of core entrepreneurship competency were conducted on 63 female university students (32 in experimental group, 31 in control group) and then the results were analyzed. The course in which the experimental group participated was a team-based project learning course and it required a team of three people to draw an entrepreneurship plan containing social problem solving as the final result. The course was operated for a total of 8 weeks. To measure the level of entrepreneurship core competency in the pre- and post- test, the survey tool that was developed by the Ministry of Education and Korea Entrepreneurship Foundation (2020) was used. This tool composed by 'value creation', 'challenge', 'self-directed', and 'group creativity' competencies. As analyses methods, i) covariance analysis was performed using the pretest as a covariate, and then a two-way ANOVA was performed with treatment (experimental group, control group) and time point (pre test, post test) as two independent variables. Results show while there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in the value creation competency, it significantly contributed to the enhancement of challenge, self-directed, and collective creativity competencies. Based on these results, implications and limitations were discussed, followed by future research direction.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-207
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• 2012

Today's consumers perceive consumption as a representation of themselves. It is not simply an act that fulfills a consumer's physical and practical needs. Even in terms of life quality, consumers increasingly want to achieve an emotional and sensible experience through consumption. Consumers now make decisions based on their need to express their position in relation to other people, pursue emotional satisfaction, and try to improve the quality of life. Culture-art products that meet such internal and external demands of consumers have made significant improvements in both quantity and quality, because of the social interest and policy support. The recognition of personal and social values of culture and arts has brought about interest in and need for culture-art products. Businesses have agilely embraced such change and actively implemented various marketing strategies utilizing culture and arts. For example, businesses began to sponsor artists who produce culture-art products while building facilities for cultural and art performances or exhibitions. Businesses have also provided performances and exhibitions free-of-charge or at affordable prices. As a result, the supply in the market has started to exceed its demand as is often the case in many of other markets. However, such imbalance has occurred not because of over-supply but because of a lack of demand. Given these circumstances, the government and culture and art related organizations, which had mainly concentrated on the supply side, started to recognize the importance of creating personal and social values in culture and arts. As a result, the government and various organizations are now creating various strategies that include policy measures to achieve their new found goal. Unfortunately however, such efforts are not meeting the expectations. Focusing on above-mentioned circumstances and problems, this study aims to find measures to create demand for culture-art products in the internal conditions of those who consume culture-art products. In other words, given that the demand for culture-art products has not increased despite all external conditions to encourage consumption, this study aims to find the reasons in consumers' value judgment on culture-art products. Though there were recent studies on culture-art products that applied consumer behavior on marketing theories, most of them focused on peripheral aspects such as people's motivation for or satisfaction from watching culture-art events. Hence, there is a need to understand what kind of value consumers perceive from culture-art products and how such value cognition leads to consumption in a comprehensive manner. This study acts as follow-up to a separate study entitled "Qualitative Study about Value Cognition and Benefits of Consumer on Culture-Art Products". The current study aims to extend practical implications that enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies among the producing and policy agencies in the industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate dimensions of value cognition, benefits and attributes of culture-art products, and identify the effects of consumer value cognition on benefits and attributes. The questionnaire was developed based on the conceptual structure of qualitative research and previous researches. It was composed of value cognition, benefits, attributes of culture-art products and demographic variables. This survey was conducted on-line and off-line among a total of 662 persons ranging from their teens to their 50's who were living in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, various metropolitan cities, and small and medium-sized cities. The data collected was analyzed by factor analysis and path analysis using SPSS WIN 18.0 and AMOS 16.0. This empirical study found that the dimensions of value cognition of culture-art products were categorized into personal goods, aesthetic goods and public property. This shows that the consumers perceive culture-art products as products that are worthy enough to pay the costs not just for personal benefits but also for their social values. Also the formation of value cognition for culture-art products requires special conditions unlike that for physical consumer goods and services, which simply require marketing stimuli. The dimensions of benefits pursued by consuming culture-art products were found to be composed of four types - pursuit of aesthetic benefits, pursuit of actual benefits, pursuit of emotional benefits, and pursuit of conspicuous character. This result implies that people consume culture-art products not just to pursue pleasure from emotional and intelligent satisfaction as well as social relations, but also to seek the needs and benefits embodied at a social level. The dimensions of attributes of culture-art products had seven different factors, - environmental, price, evaluation, people, artwork, composition, and personal relations - which is plentiful. This is because the attributes of culture-art products are very complicated compared to other consumer goods or services. Since culture-art products include not just cultural or artistic works but also all physical, human, environmental, and systemic elements of the products in a comprehensive manner, consumers perceive everything they experience in the process of consuming culture-art products as part of the products. The dimensions of value cognition was found to affect attributes of the products, mostly using pursued benefits as a mediating factors. This result is consistent with the result of qualitative research, and proves that applying the means-end chain theory in the reverse direction is reasonable. The result can be interpreted that consumers' value cognitions for culture-art products turns into actual benefits leading to consumers' decisions. Furthermore, this result reveals that when consumers choose culture-art products, they take into account the attributes of culture-art products depending on the benefits they pursue. These results confirm that despite their conceptual and abstract attributes, culture-art products have values that contribute to actual benefits for individual consumers and society. Hence, value cognition generates benefits to be pursued and this in turn affects the consumers' choices of attributes on products. Based on the conceptual structure of consumers' value cognitions on culture-art products and its dimensions, it is possible to find detailed methods to provide opportunities for education and training to form and reinforce positive value cognition on culture-art products. And through those methods, it will be possible to develop attributes of culture-art products according to the dimensions of pursued benefits, and allow conceptual products become the subject to valuable consumption in real life. These results provide theoretical understanding of consumer behavior in culture marketing and useful information to culture-art producers, companies that use culture and art, and government agencies that use culture-art as a mean to improve the public perception of quality of life. As a follow up on this study, there should be experimental studies that can develop criteria visualizing the demands of consumers who purchase culture-art products and identify their detailed attributes. Studies that compare characteristics of different areas within the culture-art product category and in-depth studies on a specific area or genre will also be needed. In order to develop marketing strategies for culture-art products, studies on the formation and reinforcement of positive value cognition on culture-art products and education for the development of consumer demand as well as on the development and differentiation of attributes of culture-art products depending on types of consumer groups should also follow.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2019

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the main driving forces leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The technologies associated with AI have already shown superior abilities that are equal to or better than people in many fields including image and speech recognition. Particularly, many efforts have been actively given to identify the current technology trends and analyze development directions of it, because AI technologies can be utilized in a wide range of fields including medical, financial, manufacturing, service, and education fields. Major platforms that can develop complex AI algorithms for learning, reasoning, and recognition have been open to the public as open source projects. As a result, technologies and services that utilize them have increased rapidly. It has been confirmed as one of the major reasons for the fast development of AI technologies. Additionally, the spread of the technology is greatly in debt to open source software, developed by major global companies, supporting natural language recognition, speech recognition, and image recognition. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the practical trend of AI technology development by analyzing OSS projects associated with AI, which have been developed by the online collaboration of many parties. This study searched and collected a list of major projects related to AI, which were generated from 2000 to July 2018 on Github. This study confirmed the development trends of major technologies in detail by applying text mining technique targeting topic information, which indicates the characteristics of the collected projects and technical fields. The results of the analysis showed that the number of software development projects by year was less than 100 projects per year until 2013. However, it increased to 229 projects in 2014 and 597 projects in 2015. Particularly, the number of open source projects related to AI increased rapidly in 2016 (2,559 OSS projects). It was confirmed that the number of projects initiated in 2017 was 14,213, which is almost four-folds of the number of total projects generated from 2009 to 2016 (3,555 projects). The number of projects initiated from Jan to Jul 2018 was 8,737. The development trend of AI-related technologies was evaluated by dividing the study period into three phases. The appearance frequency of topics indicate the technology trends of AI-related OSS projects. The results showed that the natural language processing technology has continued to be at the top in all years. It implied that OSS had been developed continuously. Until 2015, Python, C ++, and Java, programming languages, were listed as the top ten frequently appeared topics. However, after 2016, programming languages other than Python disappeared from the top ten topics. Instead of them, platforms supporting the development of AI algorithms, such as TensorFlow and Keras, are showing high appearance frequency. Additionally, reinforcement learning algorithms and convolutional neural networks, which have been used in various fields, were frequently appeared topics. The results of topic network analysis showed that the most important topics of degree centrality were similar to those of appearance frequency. The main difference was that visualization and medical imaging topics were found at the top of the list, although they were not in the top of the list from 2009 to 2012. The results indicated that OSS was developed in the medical field in order to utilize the AI technology. Moreover, although the computer vision was in the top 10 of the appearance frequency list from 2013 to 2015, they were not in the top 10 of the degree centrality. The topics at the top of the degree centrality list were similar to those at the top of the appearance frequency list. It was found that the ranks of the composite neural network and reinforcement learning were changed slightly. The trend of technology development was examined using the appearance frequency of topics and degree centrality. The results showed that machine learning revealed the highest frequency and the highest degree centrality in all years. Moreover, it is noteworthy that, although the deep learning topic showed a low frequency and a low degree centrality between 2009 and 2012, their ranks abruptly increased between 2013 and 2015. It was confirmed that in recent years both technologies had high appearance frequency and degree centrality. TensorFlow first appeared during the phase of 2013-2015, and the appearance frequency and degree centrality of it soared between 2016 and 2018 to be at the top of the lists after deep learning, python. Computer vision and reinforcement learning did not show an abrupt increase or decrease, and they had relatively low appearance frequency and degree centrality compared with the above-mentioned topics. Based on these analysis results, it is possible to identify the fields in which AI technologies are actively developed. The results of this study can be used as a baseline dataset for more empirical analysis on future technology trends that can be converged.