• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.63-77
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• 2022

The importance of start-ups and venture companies in the Korean economy is growing. However, the successful growth of startups and venture companies are still challenging as 70% of startups fail within 5 years. A new perspective on innovation is essential to overcome the liability of newness and the liability of smallness in the existing market and obtain the competitive advantage. Recent phenomenon in the Korean startups ecosystem is the remarkable growth of unicorns and future unicorns. Their business models, types of business, and success cases serve as a good example. Neverthless, the process of unicorn and future unicorn startups making new industries and innovative business has poorly understood. In this paper, we first define 175 unicorns and future unicorn startups participating in the K-unicorn project as a unicorn group and analyze current trends of the group. Then the in-depth analyses of industry sectors are conducted. Specifically, focusing on the unicorn forming the new market, we examine the unicorn making the processes of industry category innovation through the business innovation model. Lastly, broadening the scope of the analysis to the unicorn group, policy implications in startups and venture ecosystem are suggested.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2019

The presence of shops necessary for everyday life is a factor that increases the satisfaction of residential environment. From the perspective of founders, establishing businesses with high needs of local residents is a factor that affects business success. In this paper, we try to find out the status of businesses closely related to everyday city life. And it analyzes whether the formation of these businesses is consistent with the initial consumer needs of the new city. The purpose of this paper is to derive meaningful results that both the business founder and consumer can win-win. The current status of the life-friendly businesses and the needs of citizens were analyzed in the S city. As a results of analysis, the needs for education appears strongly at the early stage of urban development. And it shows a characteristic of being weakened to some extent with the passage of time. On the other hand, the needs for food, which is the basic requirement of life, has a low starting and steadily increasing character.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.59-76
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• 2019

Most technology-based entrepreneurship(TBE) go through an process of decline or disappear without overcoming the valley of death(VoD). The purpose of this study is to identify the growth dimension of TBE and to test the influence of firms activities on firms growth over time. This study identified the two-dimensional growth dimension divided by size and profit through exploratory factor analysis(EFA) of a number of growth indicators. Then, we defined the discrete state of growth firm in four states, divided by size and profit, and five states, including the closure of business. Multi-nomial logit model is used to predict the effect of TBE activities on a discrete state of growth firm(size×profit, closure of business) based on multiple independent variables. The independent variables are based on five representative firms activities: employment, marketing, R&D, financial activities, and general management activities. The growth stage of TBE over time has been categorized into three stages: early stage, middle stage, and late stage of business, taking into account the main periods during which the survival rate of startups sharply decreases. The analytical data of this study was based on the secondary data of the start-up supporting companies of government and public institutions. The subjects of analysis were TBE within 10 years. As a result of the empirical analysis, the employment and marketing activities of TBE show that early and mid-term activities had an effect on the state of firms growth. However, if there is a difference, employment activities have both positive and negative effects, while marketing activities have only a positive effect on size and profit growth. And besides, R&D activities, financial activities, and general management activities throughout the entire process of firms growth were found to be firms activities that have both positive and negative effects on firms growth. In addition, the age of the founder, the firms' industry, and the geographic location of the firms, which are general characteristics of the company, were found to have a distinctive effect on the growth status of the firms according to the growth stage.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.83-96
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• 2020

Traditionally social problems had been largely left to be handled by non-profit organizations, not because of lack of interests in social causes but mostly because of lack of innovative ideas to solve them in commercially viable ways. This market failure has recently been fixed by social enterprises, which manage to provide both solutions for social issues and commercially viable business models. As a result, we have been witnessing a sudden spike of public interests in these social enterprises as well as a call for empirical investigation on social enterprises by prior studies. However, empirically investigating a social enterprise has been a challenging endeavor mostly due to the insufficient number of successful social enterprises. Answering to the call in this study, we empirically investigate Goyohan Taxi, a successful social enterprise that partners with visually impaired cabdrivers and offers a taxi service, by both longitudinally interviewing the founder and adopting in vivo observation throughout the entrepreneurial journey of Goyohan Taxi. Based on the single case study method, we find that Goyohan Taxi adopts two distinctive decision-making mechanisms, the de-escalation of commitment and the orthogonality of commercial and social goals. Although generalizability of the our finding is minimal due to the limitation of single case study method, our finding contributes to the research of social entrepreneurship by offering new avenue of research in decision-making process of social entrepreneurs.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.99-109
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• 2015

The investment in healthcare industry has recently increased not only for global ventures but also for the domestic ventures. However, there has been hardship of founding and investment caused by healthcare startups characteristics that are costly and time consuming. In this study, the applicability of 'Lean Startup' theory to healthcare ventures was explored through the case of a domestic startup which accomplished funding from VC and KOSDAQ after establishing based on its technology in healthcare industry. There have been numerous case studies that applied 'Lean Startup' to IT industry. However, this case study that applied 'Lean Startup' to healthcare industry have some implications as follow: First, it is critical to conduct a hypothesis testing at initial research stage through R&D of 'MVP' (Minimum Viable Product) as the prototype testing is strictly prohibited in healthcare industry. Second, healthcare R&D teams ought to be well organized as startup teams and all researchers should be equipped with entrepreneurship as the licensing process in healthcare industry is time-consuming and costly due to issues like clinical studies. Lastly, management skills as smart and light as 'Lean Startup' are required in order to encourage young engineers' technology startups.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.137-150
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• 2015

This study investigated the influence of Entrepreneurship, Start-up Competency on Entrepreneurial Satisfaction and the moderating effect of Flow experience. The goal of this investigation is to empirically prove that despite the benefits of educational and financial support, mentoring and consulting which selected applicants received as a part of supporting business for start-up companies provided by national and local government and public organizations, there is a gap between individual entrepreneurs' satisfaction after actual foundation of the company. For the purpose of this investigation, data was collected through a survey with 320 entrepreneurs who were beneficiaries of government's supporting business for start-up companies and have founded their companies less than 5 years ago. For entrepreneurship variables, three factors of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking were reviewed, and also reviewed the three variables network capability, market orientation and marketing capacity as Start-up competency. The collected data was used to perform a multiple regression analysis, and the moderating effect of flow experience was analysed using moderated regression analysis. The result of analysis shows that innovativeness, proactiveness and risk-taking of entrepreneurship positively affected the entrepreneurial satisfaction, and network capability, market orientation and marketing capability also positively affected the entrepreneurial satisfaction. As a result of analysing the moderating effect of flow experience, it appeared that there is a positive moderating effect between entrepreneurship, start-up competency, and the entrepreneurial satisfaction. This result concludes that evaluation items of entrepreneurship and start-up competency as applicant selecting criteria in supporting business for start-up companies, are valid. It is also concluded that start-up supports such as education, funds and consulting are also important, but it is necessary to make changes such as construction of start-up ecosystem and reinforcement of networking support, so that entrepreneurs can have the flow experience themselves in the process after founding a company.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2013

So many researchers have been interested in key success factors of technological start-ups. However, previous studies have not focussed on Concreteness of technological capabilities at the growth stages and industry in technological start-ups. The purpose of this study is to investigate the Concreteness of technological capabilities that have influence on performance of technological start-ups. Empirical data was collected from 342 firms in BI in Korea. It used the questionnaire method for the CEO, It is executed the Regression analysis to test hypotheses of influencing effects. Results of the hypothesis testing are summarized as follows: First, It was found that technological capabilities had statistically significant influence on firm performance. But the property based resources had lower significant influence. Second, This research found that the knowledge based resources had higher significant influence on technological start-ups performance at IT industry. Third, The knowledge based resources had higher significant influence on performance at growth stages. In conclusion, technological capabilities were verified as important firm resources of technology-based start-ups for firm performance. But the Concreteness of technological capabilities was significant differences by growth-stage of firms.

• 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2018.04a
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• pp.155-158
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• 2018

교육훈련은 기업의 인적자본을 축적하고 혁신을 자극하여 공급측면을 확장한다. 또한 기업 경쟁력 강화에 따른 임금상승과 소비증대, 투자 확대 등 총수요 확장효과도 있다. 그러나 만성적인 현장의 인력 부족, 높은 비정규직 비율 등의 특성을 안고 있는 중소기업의 경우 근로자에 대한 교육훈련 비율이 상대적으로 낮은 것으로 나타나고 있다. 본 연구는 미래신산업으로 평가받고 있는 보건산업분야 교육담당자 및 교육생을 대상으로 교육참여 애로사항을 조사하고 정책적 시사점을 도출하였다. 첫째, 업종 및 기업규모와 관련 없이 가장 큰 애로요인은 교육에 참가할 시간부족이 나타났다. 업종별로는 병원분야가 제조업인 제약, 의료기기, 화장품분야 보다 시간적 제약에 대한 지적이 많아 병원분야 인력부족 문제가 교육 참여에도 영향을 미치고 있는 것을 보여주었다. 둘째, 지방소재 기업일수록 지리적 접근성을 애로요인으로 지적하고 있어 지역 교육 및 기업 현장으로의 찾아가는 교육의 필요성이 도출되었다. 셋째, 중소기업에서 교육정보 인지도를 문제로 지적했는데, 이는 교육 관련 조직이 미비한 중소기업일수록 교육정보 확보 및 사내전파가 낮기 때문으로 추정된다. 이러한 연구결과는 단기 다수교육과정 즉 카페테리아식 교육과정과 사이버과정을 통한 종사자들의 선택권 강화, 지역 및 기업 현장으로의 찾아가는 교육, 중소기업에 대한 지속적인 교육정보 제공 및 사내 전파, 교육참여 우수기업과 종사자에 대한 표창 등의 유인체계가 필요함을 시사한다.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.89-114
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• 2009

BizCool is an entry-level business education program implemented with a purpose of enhancing the entrepreneurial disposition and capability of the youth through enterprise commencement education of vocational high school students and developing them into economic pillars of future to alleviate the labor shortage crisis of small and medium enterprises and revitalize enterprise commencement. In this study, the factors were deduced and a path analysis was conducted with the purpose of proposing a revitalization plan through an effectiveness analysis of enterprise commencement education for the youth. The result of the analysis revealed that BizCool has effects on the knowledge and understanding of enterprise commencement, and enterprise commencement knowledge also has effects on the understanding of enterprise commencement. In addition, it was found that the enterprise commencement knowledge and the understanding on enterprise commencement have effects on the intention of enterprise commence. In the result of verifying the hypothesis that the understanding of enterprise commencement according to the psychological characteristics of individuals will have a positive effect on the enterprise commencement intention, it was revealed that the risk resignation disposition and patience for ambiguity are having effects but accomplishment desire is not playing a moderating variable role. Through the above path analysis, a conclusion was obtained that the enterprise commencement education has effects on the outcome of enterprise commencement education through the understanding on enterprise commencement. Additionally, the nation needs to actively lead systematic enterprise commencement education within the policy of job creation upon realizing the need for enterprise commencement education of vocational high school, and a revitalization plan was proposed on the five kinds of a conversion of social perception on vocational high school, establishment of institutes specializing in BizCool and cultivation of BizCool specialists, development of various materials and expansion of BizCool program, field-centered lessons, revitalization of enterprise commencement club and personnel and resource support by companies.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.69-77
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• 2014

Innopolis start-ups belong to the category of the research-based spin-offs, but in the meantime, has characteristics that separate them from the research-based spin-offs in terms of the process of technology commercialization. This study aims to assess the impacts of the foundation and management of the Innopolis start-ups in terms of expansion of entrepreneurship through entrepreneurial intention of researchers and economic achievements. A data set from 22 Innopolis start-ups and 200 researchers in 14 PRIs through door-to-door interviews and surveys is studied. Main findings are as follows: First, the foundation of the Innopolis start-up has a positive and strong impact on expansion of entrepreneurship through entrepreneurial intention of researchers. Second, technology transfer performance of researchers turns out to be major factor that affects entrepreneurial intention. Third, expansion of entrepreneurship, along with economic achievements characterized by sales, job creation and R&D investment, is a positive effect of the foundation and management of the Innopolis start-ups. The results of this paper provide an opportunity to test whether Innopolis start-up's strength in technology commercialization can be applied to actual management of the Innopolis startup and to examine the general direction in which the foundation and management of the Innopolis start-ups is heading.