• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.17-36
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• 2012

With wide recognition of significant roles of venture companies in economic and industrial developments, substantial academic attention has been paid to understanding venture success and numerous policy measures have been made to help them. A serious problem, however, is that only a few limited number of venture could successfully grow to be large firm. The goal of this paper is to identify critical factors to drive 'leapfrogging' growth of venture companies by analyzing the success cases in Daejeon area. The theoretical analysis and case study suggest 1) founders' entrepreneurship continuity as a significant internal organization factor for growth and highlight importance of 2) exploring foreign markets and globalization of business operation in the early stage of growth. Furthermore, the research results identify two critical innovation strategies, 3) ambidextrous R&D strategy and 4) open innovation strategy, for entrepreneurial founders to effectively catch the business chances brought by environment change.