• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2024

Recently, venture capital investment has been shrinking globally due to high interest rates and economic slowdown. Korea is no exception. Due to the downturn in the M&A and public markets, increasing economic uncertainty, and the aftermath of corporate bankruptcies, venture capitalists are facing many difficulties in raising funds. In the changed economic environment, the investment decision factors of venture capitalists have also changed. However, studies on VCs' investment decisions have focused on the general economic environment. This study examines how VCs' investment decision-making factors change during economic recessions and booms. To this end, we interviewed active investors who have experienced both economic recessions and booms to compare how VCs' investment decision factors change: 1) personal characteristics of founders, 2) experience of founders, 3) product/service, 4) market, 5) financial situation, 6) contract terms and 7) venture capital co-investment. The results showed that founder's personal characteristics, experience, and product/service were more important during the economic recession. Market is slightly more important during economic booms. The importance of financial situation and investment conditions increased sharply during the recession compared to the boom. Finally, venture capital co-investment did not differ significantly between recessions and booms. By understanding the investment decision-making factors of venture capitalists in the recent difficult venture investment environment, this study aims to help startups raise funds and survive in a difficult market.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.110-122
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• 2019

IT innovation, cultural revolution based on smart and social networks diversified sharing economy services. Due to the rising of business utilizing the sharing economy concept, it is important to better understand the motivational factors that drive and deterrent sharing economy services in the marketplace. Based on responses from 809 adult users, 3 drivers and 2 deterrents affecting intention to use of sharing economy services were identified. Then this study categorized sharing economy services as three types of segments based on consumer perceptions and subjectivity, and analyzed differencies of perceptions on motivational factors between groups. As a result, redistribution market group has shown meaningful different average scores on economic benefit, sustainability and social risk with other groups. Based on the empirical evidence, this study suggests several propositions for future studies and implications for sharing economy businesses on how to formulate optical strategies and manage users.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.43-58
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• 2021

This study analyzes the entrepreneurship policies of the previous Korean administrations from the perspective of the Policy Paradigm by Hall(1993). A total of 195 newspaper articles and 202 government documents were examined to identify policy paradigm shifts through an analysis of policy objectives, policy instruments, and changing quality of policy instruments by each administration. The first paradigm was built during the 5th and 6th Republic, where 'Support for Small and Medium Enterprise Establishment Act' was enacted in 1986 to promote and support start-ups in the manufacturing sector. Next is the so-called 'people's government' period where 'Act on Special Measures for the Promotion of Venture Businesses' was enacted to tackle the challenges posed during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. A new policy goal was set to promote and nurture venture companies seeking subsequent means to achieve it. The third paradigm shift took place during President Moon's administration in order to effectively respond to the issues stemming from the fourth industrial revolution and the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the overall revision of the 'Support for Small and Medium Enterprise Establishment Act', the scope of startups were expanded, new industries and technology startups were supported and promoted, and venture investment-related laws were streamlined. In addition, the Small and Medium Business Administration was promoted as the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, enabling them to take initiative in implementing startup policies. Particularly, this study focuses on examining the low survival rate of startup companies and the revitalization of private investment as rising policy issues for recent startups, and suggests the improvement direction due to startup policy paradigm shift.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1-26
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• 2020

The term 'Unicorns' in the corporate ecosystem was firstly introduced by Aileen Lee in 2013. It has been actively discussed in South Korea particularly to compare the level of the 'start-up ecosystem' from a global perspective. Accordingly, the Korean government has recently set a policy goal 'to nurture 20 Korean unicorn companies by 2022'. While the phenomenon of 'Unicorn Club Company' has been brought to the level of policy objectives and spread more widely to the public, existing academic research to understand its substantial and underlying implications has been insufficient. First, in this study, the characteristics of 479 'Unicorn Club' companies in 2019 were analyzed in-depth. Previous research has focused on the general status and trend by analyzing the number of unicorn companies by country and industry classifications. However, this study conducted a qualitative exploratory analysis by investigating descriptive statistics about unicorn companies, including their investors, while providing case studies. Also, cluster analysis, ANOVA, and multi-level regression were employed for quantitative exploration. The characteristics of individual companies were examined based on the "ERIS Model (Entrepreneur - Industry(Market) - Resource - Strategy Model)". Secondly, factors influencing its valuations were examined in connection with the previously analyzed characteristic variables and investor characteristics. Finally, based on these, the future direction of the "Unicorn Phenomenon" from the perspective of "Enterprise Ecosystem" and productively using it from the perspective of the public policy is suggested.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.8
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• pp.119-131
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to examine the mediated effects of entrepreneurship and market orientation on organizational culture and management performance as the cause of the reversal phenomenon of startups defeating traditional giants. Through the research method of bootstrapping proposed by Hayes (2013), the total effect, direct effect and indirect effect analysis were conducted. As a result, there was no direct impact relationship between organizational culture and management performance, but it was confirmed that it had a positive impact on management performance by mediating both entrepreneurial behavior and market orientation in the relationship between organizational culture and management performance. This study is meaningful in that it is linked to existing theories such as entrepreneurship and market orientation and it extends the scope of competency targets required for business performance to an organizational culture. Companies need to create an innovation-oriented organizational culture for management performance and value creation, and they have to open up their culture with entrepreneurial behavior and market orientation by breaking away from the inertia of organization.

• 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2023.04a
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• pp.7-10
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• 2023

IT기술의 발전과 스마트기기의 대중화로 인한 정보통신기술의 눈부신 발전으로 온라인 플랫폼을 통한 식품구매 비중이 급격히 증가하여 온·오프라인의 경계를 없어지고 있다. 더군다나 COVID-19 팬데믹은 반조리식품, 밀키트 등 홈쿡(Home-cook) 온라인시장을 급격히 확산시키며 소비자 구매추세를 오프라인에서 온라인으로 완전히 바꿔놓는 전환점이 되었다. 이런 트랜드를 반영하듯 다양한 온라인 식자재 이커머스 플랫폼의 출현하면서 브랜드마다 각각의 차별점을 내세우고 있으나 경쟁은 치열해지고 차별화는 더욱 어려운 게 현실이다. 이는 기업이 소비자에게 일방향으로 정보 또는 상품 및 서비스를 제공 하는 수직적 관계가 아닌, 수평적 쌍방향 관계로의 발전으로 이어져 브랜드가 가지고 있는 가치에 대해 보다 정직하게 보여주어야 소비자의 신뢰를 얻을 수 있게 되었다(Kotler, 2017). 또한, 과거에 소비자들의 만족도가 높았던 서비스도 현재 환경에서는 소비자의 니즈를 충족시키지 못하는 경우가 증가하고 있다(조윤오, 2018). 이는 서비스에 대한 소비자의 기대와 니즈가 지속적으로 변화하고 있다는 것을 의미하며, 이에 따라 기업은 소비자들의 새로운 요구를 만족시키기 위하여 다양한 서비스를 개발 및 제공하는 것이 중요하다고 사료된다(김광재 등, 2011). 이미 높은 인지도를 가진 플랫폼일지라도 지속가능한 우위를 선점하기 어려운 상황에서 온라인 플랫폼에 대한 소비자의 긍정적인 태도와 재구매를 유도하기 위해 제품 본질 뿐 아니라 서비스 차별화를 꾀하고 있고 차별화된 포지션을 차지하기 위해 온라인 플랫폼에 대한 소비자 인식과 서비스 품질 요인을 측정하여 고객이 중시하는 요인에 집중하는 것이 필요하다. 이에 본 연구는 온라인 플랫폼을 통해 식자재를 구매하는 소비자의 꾸준한 방문과 구매를 유인하기 위해 어떤 변수의 영향력을 높여야 소비자 재구매의도를 증가시킬 수 있는지 방법을 모색하고 온라인 플랫폼 기업 및 스타트업의 경영전략 마련에 목적이 있다. 이를 위해 식자재 구매 플랫폼 품질속성, 서비스품질 정도,, 충성도의 전반적인 영향관계를 파악하는 연구 과제를 설정하고, 식자재 이커머스 온라인 플랫폼 이용 전반에 대한 평가를 실시할 예정이다. 이러한 과정을 통해 도출된 결과는 식자재 이커머스 플랫폼 운영 전략을 세우는데 유용한 자료가 될 것이라 기대하며, 기존의 온라인 식품구매 플랫폼의 서비스품질 요인과 소비자 행동 간의 관계를 설명하는 것과는 다른 새로운 시사점을 제공할 수 있다는 측면에서 의미 있는 연구가 될 것이다. 또한, 다양한 산업에서의 플랫폼 비지니스 모델 적용을 위한 전략 수립을 하는 데에 필요한 기초자료를 마련하고자 한다.

• Korean small business review
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.31-57
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• 2021

This study delves into a question as to how the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is internalized across corporations. CSR internalization refers to the process where a corporation incorporates CSR practices into its business practices. Drawn from the institutionalization process of knowledge adoption under environmental pressure, we pay attention to the roles of proximity, defined as the distance between environmental characteristics and organizational characteristics of corporations. And we argue that the extent to which a given firm is situated in the environment knowledgeable will make the firm likely to adopt CSR practices. To test this idea, we figure out when and how corporations participate in the B-Corporation Movement in the U.S., through the lens of proximity. Specifically, we subdivide proximity into geographical proximity, organizational proximity, and overlapped proximity and examine whether proximity can increase the likelihood of adopting CSR practices. With a sample of 536 start-ups which had participated in the B-Corporation Movement between 2007 and 2017, we find that the three types of proximity consistently increase the likelihood of becoming a certified B-Corp. This suggests that a corporation is highly likely to accept the concept of CSR under external pressures, along with its intrinsic motivation, which provide theoretical and practical implications on CSR internalization.

• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2020

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean Association of Small Business Studies, this study reviewed research papers on the subject of entrepreneurship in the Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business. For 40 years, the subjects of entrepreneurship-related studies published in this journal were relatively limited and the number of articles was very few. The research papers mainly focus on defining entrepreneurship as an innovation or as a determinant of innovation and survey-based empirical studies have been conducted since the publication of the Entrepreneurial Orientation(EO) by Lumpkin and Dess(1996). Although entrepreneurship is a research field that can be approached from various perspectives such as economics, sociology, psychology, cultural anthropology, and organization theory, most of the papers published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business do not clearly state their theoretical positions or viewpoints. Moreover, there are few studies that incorporate corporate entrepreneurs or startup teams although they have been major actors or entrepreneurship. Lastly, innovation has been the main focus of research, leaving other arenas such as opportunity recognition and discovery understudied. In order to increase the quantity and improve the quality in the entrepreneurship research, we need to have the entrepreneurship field as one academic section in the Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.145-158
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the ownership structure of unlisted firms on KOSDAQ listing. There are few studies analyzing the characteristics of listing success based on ownership structure. For startup executives, there is not enough data to refer to the ownership structure that can increase the possibility of listing. This paper examines the effects of ownership structure on IPO success through comparison between listed successful and failed companies among the companies in application for KOSDAQ listing eligibility review. The major findings are as follows; (1) Venture capital investment and shareholding have a statistically positive effect on the success of KOSDAQ listing. This results indicate that the venture capital's investment alleviate the problem of information asymmetry, and it is a valid signal for market participants. The result means the role of venture capital seems to be important when companies are listed on the KOSDAQ. (2) The largest shareholder's stake has an inverted-U shape relationship with listing success. In other words, the ownership concentration mitigates moral hazard problem, which leads to listing success. However, if the ownership concentration exceeds a certain level, the chances of success in listing will decrease due to concerns over the pursuit of private interests. The result suggests that the largest shareholder's stake reduce agency problem. This study academically contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating the ownership structure affects IPOs, and explaining the results based on agent theory and signal theory. Our results provide practical implications for companies preparing for an IPO on the KOSDAQ.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.29-35
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• 2021

Fintech, a new form of financial industry that converges IT, is developing rapidly in developed countries such as the US and China. The U.S. and China lowered barriers to entry through deregulation to develop and expand the fintech industry, and, for example, encouraged startup companies to incorporate various ideas through negative regulations that are more relaxed or do not apply regulations for a certain period of time. The U.S. and China did not apply existing financial regulations to the fintech industry, providing an environment where fintech startups could grow more easily. Currently, in Korea, fintech technologies such as 'Samsung Pay', 'Toss' and 'Kakao Pay' have been developed and are being activated, and also their scale is expanding. Although various systems are being reorganized and regulated for the development of Fintech, Fintech's growth rate is slow due to unfriendly and unopened regulations in the financial sector and various markets. This paper examines the status of fintech, focusing on advanced fintech and Korea, and examines fintech-related regulations that hinder the development of the fintech industry. We propose a more flexible way of easing excessive regulation in the financial sector, such as post-regulation.