• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.47-65
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• 2020

With the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in sight, innovative business models utilizing new technologies are emerging, and startups are enjoying an abundance of opportunities based on the agility to respond to disruptive innovations and the opening to new technologies. However, what is most important in creating a sustainable start-up ecosystem is not the start-up itself, but the process of research-start-investment-investment-the leap to listing and big business-in order to build a virtuous circle of startups that leads to re-investment. To this end, the environment created in the hub area where start-ups were conducted is important, and these material and non-material environmental factors are described as being inclusive by the word "entrepreneurial ecosystem." This study aims to provide implications for Korea's entrepreneurial ecosystem through the study of the interaction of the elements that make up the start-up ecosystem and the relationship of ecosystem participants in Singapore. Singapore has been consistently mentioned as the top two Asian countries in assessing the start-up environment and business environment. In this process, six elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem presented by Isenberg(2010)-policies, finance, culture, support, human resources, and market-are the best frameworks for analyzing entrepreneurial ecosystems in terms of well encompassing prior studies related to entrepreneurial ecosystem elements, and a model of regional transformation is formed focusing on some elements to suit Singapore, the target area of study. By considering that Singapore's political nature would inevitably have a huge impact on finance, Smart Nation policy was having an impact on university education related to entrepreneurship, and that the entrepreneurial networks and global connectivity formed within Singapore's start-up infrastructure had a significant impact on Singapore's start-up's performance, researches needed to look more at the factors of policy, culture and market. In addition, qualitative research of participants in the entrepreneurial ecosystem was essential to understand the internal interaction of the elements of the start-up ecosystem, so the semi-structured survey was conducted by visiting the site. As such, this study examined the status of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem based on qualitative research focused on policies, culture and market elements of Singapore's start-up ecosystem, and intended to provide implications for regulations related to start-ups, the role of universities and start-up infrastructure through comparison with Korea. This could contribute not only to the future research of the start-up ecosystem, but also to the creation of a start-up infrastructure, boosting the start-up ecosystem, and the establishment of the orientation of the start-up education in universities.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.159-170
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• 2021

As the main purpose of R&D changes from the center of knowledge creation to the center of economic value creation through technology transfer and commercialization, public technologies can also secure economic feasibility as well as make a social contribution. Korea has been focusing on fostering core human resources who can lead the commercialization of basic and original research results by launching the 'Support project for exploring startups linked with public technology-based markets' since 2015 in order to promote public technology startup. This study is based on the results of a survey for the purpose of analyzing the performance of this project. In addition, this study derived four factors related to the I-corps project performance from the results of this survey and verified the relationship between these factors through structural equation model analysis. In summary, it was confirmed that 'Application Level' and 'Business Model,' which are positively affected directly from 'Entrepreneurship Learning,' have positive effects on 'Financial Resources'. Furthermore, the indirect effect of 'Entrepreneurship Learning' on 'Financial Resources' was verified. In particular, the high level of impact of 'Entrepreneurship Learning' on 'Application Level,' and the impact of 'Application Level' on 'Business Model' and 'Financial Resources' were also positive.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.151-163
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• 2021

Purpose - The break-even point refers to the point where total profit and total cost coincide, and from this point on, the entrepreneur's decision-making takes a different route. Strategic decisions can be made for more efficient operation and eventually for more likelihood for growth and sustainability if a startup figures out when it recoups the investment and switches to a net profit. Design/methodology/approach - 748 creativity and skill-based sole proprietors in manufacturing industry were examined to demonstrate the effect of the entrepreneur's entrepreneurial experience and education level, the business launch preparation time, or the self-financing on the achievement of break-even point. Findings - While the business launch preparation time lowered the likelihood of reaching a break-even point, self-financing increased the likelihood. As a result of further analysis by subdividing into subgroups according to skill level, only the business launch preparation time was statistically significant in the highly skilled industries. In the low skilled industries, in addition to the business launch preparation time, the CEO's education level and the self-financing were statistically significant. Research implications or Originality - The longer the business launch preparation time, the higher the start-up cost, which increases the burden of initial cost recovery, and the agile response to market changes is thereby delayed, resulting in the business idea losing its appeal. Self-financing not only provides stability and strong motivation for the business operation but also promotes careful spending which contributes to the achievement of break-even point. In particular, it is found that practical experience is more useful than theoretical knowledge in low skilled industries. Due to the limitation of secondary data based on the recollection, the time required to reach a break-even point, percentage of financing sources, etc. may include cognitive errors. In addition, variables are not included that explain the characteristics of creativity and skill-based sole proprietorship, so it is necessary to exercise caution with the actual application.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.13-35
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• 2020

Startup accelerators are a new type of investors providing a certain amount of shares for imparting education, mentoring, networking, and providing space and seed money that can directly resolve the difficulties faced by nascent entrepreneurs (Clarysse, 2016). Startup accelerators have expanded worldwide as their influence over the startup ecosystem has increasingly been established (Pauwels et al., 2016; Cohen & Hochberg, 2014). This study was conducted to derive investment determinants of startup accelerators that are emerging as major investment players around the world. To this end, the accelerator-type determinants of investment were derived. As previous research on this topic is nonexistent, this process involved qualitative meta-synthesis, literature reviews, observation, and in-depth interviews. First, more than 30 research papers were examined for the determinants of investment for firms at an early stage of their foundation, and the categories and determinants of investment in the relevant studies were comparatively analyzed using qualitative meta-synthesis. Further, related data were investigated to identify the characteristics of accelerators, and the startup evaluation process of US accelerators was studied. The more than 100 questions raised during this process were coded to examine the determinants of investment that accelerators considered important. In-depth interviews were conducted with four US accelerators to identify the characteristics of accelerators and key determinants of investment. Ultimately, 5 categories of accelerator-type determinants of investment and 26 subordinate determinants of investment were derived. The results were verified and supplemented by consulting with seven accelerators in Korea. The results were confirmed after pilot tests and verification by seven domestic accelerators. After confirming the accelerator-type determinants, the reliability of them was verified by examining the importance and priority of each category through the quantitative survey of Korean accelerators. The research that elicited the accelerator-type investment determinants is the first research and is expected to be a major reference to the progress of subsequent studies. This research that systematically derived the investment determinants of the accelerator is expected to make major contributions to the progress of follow-up studies, the process of selecting startups, and the investment decision-making process of the accelerators.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.43-60
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• 2023

Although the importance of starting a business is being emphasized, it is not easy for a start-up to survive. Therefore, it is necessary to come up with a plan to strengthen startup satisfaction and improve the survival rate of startup companies. In this study, we examined the impact of start-up motivation, start-up capabilities, and start-up passion of start-up companies on start-up satisfaction, as well as the moderating effect according to the founding type of general start-up companies and startups. Entrepreneurship motivation was divided into self-actualization motivation and pro-social motivation. Entrepreneurship capabilities were divided into marketing capabilities and experience capabilities. Entrepreneurship passion was divided into harmonious passion and obsessive passion. Empirical analysis was conducted by receiving surveys from 361 managers of general and startup companies within 7 years of founding their businesses online and offline. As a result, self-actualization motivation, pro-social motivation, marketing competency, experiential competency, and harmonious passion had a significant positive (+) effect on startup satisfaction. However, obsessive passion did not have a significant effect. In addition, the magnitude of influence on startup satisfaction appeared in the following order: harmonious passion, marketing competency, self-actualization motivation, pro-social motivation, and experiential competency. The moderating effect according to the type of founding of general start-ups and startups was found in pro-social motivation, experience competency, and passion for harmony. However, there was no significant moderating effect between self-actualization motivation, marketing competency, obsessive passion, and entrepreneurship satisfaction. This study presented academic implications that harmonious passion and marketing capabilities are important factors in improving startup satisfaction. In addition, practical and policy implications were presented, including the need for programs to support the psychological stability of startup business owners, strengthening startup capabilities through experts, and strengthening startup education programs that can foster self-actualization motivation and pro-social motivation.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.33-46
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• 2019

Even though Korea is strengthening the support for startups due to the limitations of growth policies focusing on large companies, the survival rate of startups is very low, so that there should be more efforts to increase the survival rate of startups. As the existing startup support institutions have provided only fragmentary supports to startups, it would be necessary to have the comprehensive support institutions. As an alternative, the accelerator providing the comprehensive support such as spatial support, education, mentoring, networking, seed investment, and connection for follow-up investment to the initial startups was legalized in Korea of 2016, based on the registration system. Currently, within less than two year from then, there have been much interest in it enough to have about 136 registered accelerators. In the United States, the accelerator was introduced more than ten years ago. In Korea, however, it is still in the initial stage, so that the researches or social consensus on the accelerator are not sufficient. Thus, this study aims to suggest the measures for the development of accelerator and the consensus on the decision making for the selection of accelerator of startups, by researching which parts are considered when startups in the accelerator stage select the accelerator. As a result of the empirical analysis, the factor that has the greatest influence on decision making factors when startup chooses an accelerator was the subsequent investment attraction. This can be explained to the accelerator as desired, considering the factor that the startup of the initial stage places the most importance on growth as investment. We hope that these research results will be sustainable in future research related to accelerators, in hopes that it will be useful for establishing accelerator policies for domestic startups and direction for revitalizing related industries.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.23-31
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• 2024

The paper investigates the influence of government-led projects on investors' decision-making reference points, using Prospect Theory and Human Capital Theory. It empirically explores whether government initiatives shift investors' reference points, offering insights for private investments in government-backed ventures. The study, spanning from May 2017 to May 2022, compares 51 companies involved in Korea's 'New Deal' policy to 49 non-participating companies. It considers founders' human capital elements such as past startup experience, technical and managerial industry experience, education level, and graduate school reputation. The analysis reveals that only the reputation of the founder's graduate school has a significant negative effect, implying a conservative approach by investors towards government-led projects. This highlights the need for investors to consider the founder's social capital and the impact of government support on venture growth and public offering pace.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.113-124
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• 2019

With the decline in the college student population and the increase in the youth unemployment rate, the university began to be interested in starting a business. Under the initiative of the government, the start-up support project was reflected in the university's educational programs, which led to the university students receiving various start-up support benefits. In response to the expansion of entrepreneurship education, various entrepreneurship education programs and support programs were applied in line with the government's efforts to start college students. As a result, students' entrepreneurial competence and willingness to start up increased. College student entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs are increasing. The increase of university student start-up companies is taking place in the entrepreneurial education environment within the university, and the support of university, community, and start-up support institutions for university student start-up, the starting point of the start-up ecosystem, is paying off. It can be seen that the youth entrepreneurship ecosystem based on university entrepreneurship education is in place. The university supports the entire business process from idea development, such as start-up classes, start-up club support, patent application support, prototype development support, and investment linkage. However, there is a university that develops and operates a unique program for each school and a university that does not. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an education program that can produce efficient results. The purpose of this study is to support the start-up program of the university to be the consumer-centered start-up support.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.199-211
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• 2019

This study analyzed the research trends of college students' entrepreneurship in 172 scholarly articles in the registered journals of the Korea Research Foundation from 2010 to 2018. The results of this study are as follows: First, the research areas and topics on university students' entrepreneurship focuses on not only characteristics of entrepreneurship and entrepreneur but also entrepreneurship education. Also, the research method was dependent on the quantitative research method coupled with the statistic techniques such as descriptive statistics, correlation, t-test, ANOVA, regression analysis, and structural equation modeling. In future research, it is necessary to expand research areas to startup idea design, startup business environment and policies. Also, it is necessary to explore various variables related to entrepreneurship, not focusing on specific variables such as entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education as well as to analyze meta analysis of the relationship between the variables influencing on the entrepreneurial intention. In addition, qualitative research and mixed research are needed to explore the process of developing entrepreneurship and the factors affecting the process of entrepreneurship.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.119-128
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• 2013

Korean entrepreneurship education has been focused on the subject selection and curriculum based research according to the stage of entrepreneurship process. But problem is happen in the theory based lecture and unrealistic content of entrepreneurship education. Recent studies in technology entrepreneurship recommend integrated approaches to educating students to operate in this space integrated programs span disciplinary lines, but more important, they combine coursework on fundamental concepts and processes with real team-based projects on technology commercialization. At the core of TI:GER(R) is a three-course academic track that provides instruction in technology commercialization processes with a focus on intellectual property/technology law and business fundamentals. Technology, management, and law are the key success content of entrepreneurship education and we need the approach the integration of these factors.