• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.215-235
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• 2024

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology is recognized as a key technology that will determine future national competitiveness, competition for AI technology and industry promotion policies in major countries is intensifying. This study aims to present implications for domestic policy making by analyzing the policies of major countries on the start-up of AI companies, which are the basis of the AI industry ecosystem. The top four countries and the EU for the number of new investment attraction companies in the 2023 AI Index announced by the HAI Research Institute at Stanford University in the United States were selected, The United States enacted the National AI Initiative Act (NAIIA) in 2021. Through this law, The US Government is promoting continued leadership in the United States in AI R&D, developing reliable AI systems in the public and private sectors, building an AI system ecosystem across society, and strengthening DB management and access to AI policies conducted by all federal agencies. In the 14th Five-Year (2021-2025) Plan and 2035 Long-term Goals held in 2021, China has specified AI as the first of the seven strategic high-tech technologies, and is developing policies aimed at becoming the No. 1 AI global powerhouse by 2030. The UK is investing in innovative R&D companies through the 'Future Fund Breakthrough' in 2021, and is expanding related investments by preparing national strategies to leap forward as AI leaders, such as the implementation plan of the national AI strategy in 2022. Israel is supporting technology investment in start-up companies centered on the Innovation Agency, and the Innovation Agency is leading mid- to long-term investments of 2 to 15 years and regulatory reforms for new technologies. The EU is strengthening its digital innovation hub network and creating the InvestEU (European Strategic Investment Fund) and AI investment fund to support the use of AI by SMEs. This study aims to contribute to analyzing the policies of major foreign countries in making AI company start-up policies and providing a basis for Korea's strategy search. The limitations of the study are the limitations of the countries to be analyzed and the failure to attempt comparative analysis of the policy environments of the countries under the same conditions.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.73-81
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• 2015

This research is designed to analyze the moderating effect of social capital between organizational slack and managerial practices for open innovation. After controlling the firm size, firm age, and environmental uncertainty, we test two hypotheses. First, we test the hypothesis that organizational slack has a positive effect on managerial practices for open innovation. Especially we focus on the managerial innovation and open innovation because recently managerial innovation and open innovation are more and more important. Second, we test the moderating role of social capital between organizational slack and managerial practices for open innovation. Because social capital is a kind of networking activity, we assume that social capital can contribute to managerial practices for open innovation through the networking activity. For this research, we administered the questionnaire surveys, and got the 250 effective data (companies) in Korea. Then we used the validity, reliability, correlation and multiple regression analysis by means of SPSS 18.0. As a result, we can find the two meaningful results. First, organizational slack, especially not absorbed slack but unabsorbed slack, has positive effect on managerial practices for open innovation. It is because absorbed slack such as excessive facilities, machines, or employees is not useful in managerial practices for open innovation. On the other hand, unabsorbed slack is useful in managerial practices for open innovation because unabsorbed slack such as excessive money or securities is very flexible and active. Taken together, the relationship between managerial practices for open innovation and unabsorbed slack is proven in terms of flexibility. Second, social capital has a moderating effect positively between organizational slack, especially not absorbed slack but unabsorbed slack, and managerial practices for open innovation. A prior study related to the relationship between managerial practices for open innovation and social capital doesn't exist yet, so this analysis result is very meaningful in academic respect. But this research has some limitations. First, this research is analyzed by limited region (Korea) and samples (250 companies), so more global regions and samples are recommended in the future. Second, we focus on managerial practices for open innovation in this paper, so the studies about technological practices for open innovation are recommended in the future.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.57-81
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• 2008

Knowledge is an essential strategic weapon for sustaining competitive advantage and is the key determinant for organizational growth. When knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout the organization, it increases an organization's value by providing the ability to respond to new and unusual situations. The growing importance of knowledge as a critical resource has forced executives to pay attention to their organizational knowledge. Organizations are increasingly undertaking knowledge management initiatives and making significant investments. Knowledge sourcing is considered as the first important step in effective knowledge management. Most firms continue to make an effort to realize the benefits of knowledge management by using various knowledge sources effectively. Appropriate knowledge sourcing strategies enable organizations to create, acquire, and access knowledge in a timely manner by reducing search and transfer costs, which result in better firm performance. In response, the knowledge management literature has devoted substantial attention to the analysis of knowledge sourcing strategies. Many studies have categorized knowledge sourcing strategies into intemal- and external-oriented. Internal-oriented sourcing strategy attempts to increase firm performance by integrating knowledge within the boundary of the firm. On the contrary, external-oriented strategy attempts to bring knowledge in from outside sources via either acquisition or imitation, and then to transfer that knowledge across to the organization. However, the extant literature on knowledge sourcing strategies focuses primarily on large organizations. Although many studies have clearly highlighted major differences between large and small firms and the need to adopt different strategies for different firm sizes, scant attention has been given to analyzing how knowledge sourcing strategies affect firm performance in small firms and what are the differences between small and large firms in the patterns of knowledge sourcing strategies adoption. This study attempts to advance the current literature by examining the impact of knowledge sourcing strategies on small firm performance from a holistic perspective. By drawing on knowledge based theory from organization science and complementarity theory from the economics literature, this paper is motivated by the following questions: (1) what are the adoption patterns of different knowledge sourcing strategies in small firms (i,e., what sourcing strategies should be adopted and which sourcing strategies work well together in small firms)?; and (2) what are the performance implications of these adoption patterns? In order to answer the questions, this study developed three hypotheses. First hypothesis based on knowledge based theory is that internal-oriented knowledge sourcing is positively associated with small firm performance. Second hypothesis developed on the basis of knowledge based theory is that external-oriented knowledge sourcing is positively associated with small firm performance. The third one based on complementarity theory is that pursuing both internal- and external-oriented knowledge sourcing simultaneously is negatively or less positively associated with small firm performance. As a sampling frame, 700 firms were identified from the Annual Corporation Report in Korea. Survey questionnaires were mailed to owners or executives who were most erudite about the firm s knowledge sourcing strategies and performance. A total of 188 companies replied, yielding a response rate of 26.8%. Due to incomplete data, 12 responses were eliminated, leaving 176 responses for the final analysis. Since all independent variables were measured using continuous variables, supermodularity function was used to test the hypotheses based on the cross partial derivative of payoff function. The results indicated no significant impact of internal-oriented sourcing strategies while positive impact of external-oriented sourcing strategy on small firm performance. This intriguing result could be explained on the basis of various resource and capital constraints of small firms. Small firms typically have restricted financial and human resources. They do not have enough assets to always develop knowledge internally. Another possible explanation is competency traps or core rigidities. Building up a knowledge base based on internal knowledge creates core competences, but at the same time, excessive internal focused knowledge exploration leads to behaviors blind to other knowledge. Interestingly, this study found that Internal- and external-oriented knowledge sourcing strategies had a substitutive relationship, which was inconsistent with previous studies that suggested complementary relationship between them. This result might be explained using organizational identification theory. Internal organizational members may perceive external knowledge as a threat, and tend to ignore knowledge from external sources because they prefer to maintain their own knowledge, legitimacy, and homogeneous attitudes. Therefore, integrating knowledge from internal and external sources might not be effective, resulting in failure of improvements of firm performance. Another possible explanation is small firms resource and capital constraints and lack of management expertise and absorptive capacity. Although the integration of different knowledge sources is critical, high levels of knowledge sourcing in many areas are quite expensive and so are often unrealistic for small enterprises. This study provides several implications for research as well as practice. First this study extends the existing knowledge by examining the substitutability (and complementarity) of knowledge sourcing strategies. Most prior studies have tended to investigate the independent effects of these strategies on performance without considering their combined impacts. Furthermore, this study tests complementarity based on the productivity approach that has been considered as a definitive test method for complementarity. Second, this study sheds new light on knowledge management research by identifying the relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies and small firm performance. Most current literature has insisted complementary relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies on the basis of data from large firms. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study identifies substitutive relationship between knowledge sourcing strategies using data from small firms. Third, implications for practice highlight that managers of small firms should focus on knowledge sourcing from external-oriented strategies. Moreover, adoption of both sourcing strategies simultaneousiy impedes small firm performance.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.636-662
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• 2018

Recently, the Moon administration established the Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Startups, as part of its national strategy for start-up and innovation growth led by small and medium-sized venture companies. In a slowing economy, as venture companies with excellent internal competencies are seen to be favorable to growth, the government funding for technology development is becoming increasingly important. Previous studies examine the internal competence factors that can strengthen competitiveness through self-efforts and the influence structure of growth stage, which is an important factor in industrial environment, on business performance. As the government support for venture firms has been strengthened, the effect of government funding on the management performance and technological innovation performance of venture firms have been recently discussed in various ways. However, there is a lack of precedent research on the moderating effect of the utilization of government funding on the existing influence structure in which firm's internal competence and growth stages affects business performance. Therefore, this study examined whether the internal competencies of the venture firms and the stage of growth have direct effects on business performance and analyzed the moderating effect in connection with government funding utilization under these influence structures. The results of the study are as follows. First, the utilization of government funding in the venture firms whose R&D personnel ratio is relatively low, not to have own brands and showed an increase of employees has a significantly positive influence on business performance. Second, the moderating effects of the government funding utilization at the high growth stage of the venture firms are shown significantly. These results suggest that the venture policy linked to the job creation of the present government requires not only the support considering R&D personnel but also the necessity of supporting human resources policy to a greater extent and further study on the effectiveness of venture firms in the high growth stage.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2017

Analysis of future business or investment opportunities, such as business feasibility analysis and company or technology valuation, necessitate objective estimation on the relevant market and expected sales. While there are various ways to classify the estimation methods of these new sales or market size, they can be broadly divided into top-down and bottom-up approaches by benchmark references. Both methods, however, require a lot of resources and time. Therefore, we propose a data-based intelligent demand forecasting system to support evaluation of new business. This study focuses on analogical forecasting, one of the traditional quantitative forecasting methods, to develop sales forecasting intelligence systems for new businesses. Instead of simply estimating sales for a few years, we hereby propose a method of estimating the sales of new businesses by using the initial sales and the sales growth rate of similar companies. To demonstrate the appropriateness of this method, it is examined whether the sales performance of recently established companies in the same industry category in Korea can be utilized as a reference variable for the analogical forecasting. In this study, we examined whether the phenomenon of "mean reversion" was observed in the sales of start-up companies in order to identify errors in estimating sales of new businesses based on industry sales growth rate and whether the differences in business environment resulting from the different timing of business launch affects growth rate. We also conducted analyses of variance (ANOVA) and latent growth model (LGM) to identify differences in sales growth rates by industry category. Based on the results, we proposed industry-specific range and linear forecasting models. This study analyzed the sales of only 150,000 start-up companies in Korea in the last 10 years, and identified that the average growth rate of start-ups in Korea is higher than the industry average in the first few years, but it shortly shows the phenomenon of mean-reversion. In addition, although the start-up founding juncture affects the sales growth rate, it is not high significantly and the sales growth rate can be different according to the industry classification. Utilizing both this phenomenon and the performance of start-up companies in relevant industries, we have proposed two models of new business sales based on the sales growth rate. The method proposed in this study makes it possible to objectively and quickly estimate the sales of new business by industry, and it is expected to provide reference information to judge whether sales estimated by other methods (top-down/bottom-up approach) pass the bounds from ordinary cases in relevant industry. In particular, the results of this study can be practically used as useful reference information for business feasibility analysis or technical valuation for entering new business. When using the existing top-down method, it can be used to set the range of market size or market share. As well, when using the bottom-up method, the estimation period may be set in accordance of the mean reverting period information for the growth rate. The two models proposed in this study will enable rapid and objective sales estimation of new businesses, and are expected to improve the efficiency of business feasibility analysis and technology valuation process by developing intelligent information system. In academic perspectives, it is a very important discovery that the phenomenon of 'mean reversion' is found among start-up companies out of general small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as stable companies such as listed companies. In particular, there exists the significance of this study in that over the large-scale data the mean reverting phenomenon of the start-up firms' sales growth rate is different from that of the listed companies, and that there is a difference in each industry. If a linear model, which is useful for estimating the sales of a specific company, is highly likely to be utilized in practical aspects, it can be explained that the range model, which can be used for the estimation method of the sales of the unspecified firms, is highly likely to be used in political aspects. It implies that when analyzing the business activities and performance of a specific industry group or enterprise group there is political usability in that the range model enables to provide references and compare them by data based start-up sales forecasting system.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.105-117
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• 2018

In this study, we identify the obstacles that occur through the relationship between I-U cooperation and look for factors that can overcome them in the 'university administration's efforts' and 'Trust between I-U'. In the study of existing I-U cooperation, the relationship between industry and university has accumulated experiences and various channels of bilateral cooperation by sustaining interactions and absorbing capacity of knowledge by path dependence. However, as cooperation increases, 'I-U cooperation barrier' are inevitable, which is explained by two perspectives: 'Difference in mutual recognition' and 'Institutional barriers'. In order to induce the achievement of effective I-U cooperation, it is necessary to overcome these obstacles stemming from mutual relations, and it will be possible to maintain the relationship of continuous I-U cooperation. The researchers conducted research on companies participating in the I-U cooperation technology development project of the 'Ministry of Small and Medium Venture Business', which is a representative I-U cooperation program in Korea. This project will be promoted in the 'Small & Medium Business I-U cooperation Center', an administration-dedicated organization of the university. The researchers measure 'University administration's efforts' and 'Trust between I-U'to overcome'I-U cooperation barrier' In order to clarify the data of the research sample, a questionnaire survey of organizational units was conducted for all companies participating in the 'I-U cooperation technology development projects' of the SMEs and Startups between 2011 and 2015, and the responses of 356 organizations were drawn. The results showed that the higher the level of 'University administration's efforts' and Trust between I-U', the lower 'Difference in mutual recognition' and 'Institutional barriers'. Particularly, it showed higher explanatory power to overcome 'Institutional barriers' among obstacles. Therefore, it should be accompanied by the interest, implementation and institutional support of I-U-R subjects to raise the level of these two factors that can overcome 'I-U cooperation barrier'.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.141-151
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of the international marketing program (hereunder refer to as 'program') among the programs to support export conducted by the Small and Medium Business Administration. Especially, this study aims to analyze the effects of the program to increase in export for small - medium enterprises of less than 7 years (base on Item 2 of Article 2 of Act on Support for Small and Medium Enterprise Establishment). In order to achieve the purpose above, export result for 1,690 companies which participated through Gyeonggi District Small and Medium Business Administration in 2014 and 2015 were selected among the 843 companies that applied to the program through 12 local small and medium business administration in Korea and quantitative analysis on export performance of 1,690 companies is conducted in this study. In this study, main variables were selected by investigating advanced researches related to export performance of company based on the existing studies. And also, samples have been collected from companies in Gyeonggi area for this research since the companies in Gyeonggi area have been ranked as the 1s annually and the companies in Gyeonggi area employ the highest number of people per industry. As a result of actual proof analysis, Firstly, it was suggested that the program influences positively on the export performance of small-medium enterprises. Secondly, the program shows that the program influenced positively on the export performance of companies with less than 7 years. Lastly, it suggested that the program influenced more positively on the small - medium enterprises with less than 7years than normal small - medium enterprises. By adding the export performances of companies in Ulsan area of which the scale of import and export is the 2nd largest and companies in Seoul area, that participated in the program during the same period, I would like to conduct follow- up research if the significant results are obtained or not.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.22
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• pp.137-165
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• 2007

It seems high time to increase productivity by adopting e-business to overcome challenges posed by both external factors including the appreciation of Korean won, oil hikes and fierce global competition and domestic issues represented by disparities between large corporations and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Seoul metropolitan and local cities, and export and domestic demand all of which weaken future growth engines in the Korean economy. The demands of the globalization era are for innovative changes in businessprocess and industrial structure aiming for creating new values. To this end, e-business is expected to play a core role in the sophistication of the Korean economy through new values and innovation. In order to examine business performance in e-business-adopting industries, this study analyzed the home shopping industry by closely looking into the financial ratios including the ratio of net profit to sales, the ratio of operation income to sales, the ratio of gross cost to sales cost, the ratio of gross cost to selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expense, and return of investment (ROI). This study, for best outcome, referred to corporate financial statements as a main resource to calculate financial ratios by utilizing Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART) of the Financial Supervisory Service, one of the Korea's financial supervisory authorities. First of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of net profit to sales is as following. CJ Home Shopping has registered a remarkable increase in its ratio of net profit rate to sales since 2002 while its competitors find it hard to catch up with CJ's stunning performances. This is partly due to the efficient management compared to CJ's value of capital. Such significance, if the current trend continues, will make the front-runner assume the largest market share. On the other hand, GS Home Shopping, despite its best organized system and largest value of capital among others, lacks efficiency in management. Second of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of operation income to sales is as following. Both CJ Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping have, until 2004, recorded similar growth trend. However, while CJ Home Shopping's operating income continued to increase in 2005, GS Home Shopping observed its operating income declining which resulted in the increasing income gap with CJ Home Shopping. While CJ Home Shopping with the largest market share in home shopping industryis engaged in aggressive marketing, GS Home Shopping due to its stability-driven management strategies falls behind CJ again in the ratio of operation income to sales in spite of its favorable management environment including its large capital. Companies in the Group B were established in the same year of 2001. NS Home Shopping was the first in the Group B to shift its loss to profit. Woori Home Shopping has continued to post operating loss for three consecutive years and finally was sold to Lotte Group in 2007, but since then, has registered a continuing increase in net income on sales. Third of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to sales cost is as following. Since home shopping falls into sales business, its cost of sales is much lower than that of other types of business such as manufacturing industry. Since 2002 in gross costs including cost of sales, SG&A expense, and non-operating expense, cost of sales turned out to have remarkably decreased. Group B has also posted a notable decline in the same sector since 2002. Fourth of all, the result of the trend analysis on the ratio of gross cost to SG&A expense is as following. Due to its unique characteristics, the home shopping industry usually posts ahigh ratio of SG&A expense. However, more than 80% of SG&A expense means the result of lax management and at the same time, a sharp lower net income on sales than other industries. Last but not least, the result of the trend analysis on ROI is as following. As for CJ Home Shopping, the curve of ROI looks similar to that of its investment on fixed assets. As it turned out, the company's ratio of fixed assets to operating income skyrocketed in 2004 and 2005. As far as GS Home Shopping is concerned, its fixed assets are not as much as that of CJ Home Shopping. Consequently, competition in the home shopping industry, at the moment, is among CJ, GS, Hyundai, NS and Woori Home Shoppings, and all of them need to more thoroughly manage their costs. In order for the late-comers of Group B and other home shopping companies to advance further, the current lax management should be reformed particularly on their SG&A expense sector. Provided that the total sales volume in the Internet shopping sector is projected to grow over 20 trillion won by the year 2010, it is concluded that all the participants in the home shopping industry should put strategies on efficient management on costs and expenses as their top priority rather than increase revenues, if they hope to grow even further after 2007.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.67-76
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• 2022

The furniture industry has a high possibility to create value-added and a high potential to create new occupations due to the characteristics of the industry, which mainly consists of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, the used furniture, which has sufficient reuse value, is also crushed and used as solid refuse fuel (SRF) recently. Besides, the number of waste treatment companies continues to decrease, and it occurs congestion of wood waste. As a way to solve the issue, a business model development of remanufacturing used furniture can be suggested as an alternative due to its high circular economic efficiency. Remanufacturing business including furniture industry creates positive effects in various aspects such as economic, environmental and job creation. In other words, remanufacturing is an effective recycling way to reduce input resources and energy in the production process. The results of economic analysis show that the expected annual revenue from the single worker furniture remanufacturing site was 104 million won which is 3.11 times more than the average income of a single-worker household in Korea and its B/C ratio was estimated about 30 which means high business feasibility. Revenue through furniture remanufacturing also showed 320 times higher than that of SRF production from the perspective of weight. In addition, it is shown that the GHGs reduction from the furniture remanufacturing is 2.2 ton CO₂-eq. per year, which is similar to the amount of GHGs absorption effect of 937 pine trees or 622 Korean oak trees annually. Thus the results of this study demonstrate that it is important to adopt an appropriate recycling method considering the economic and environmental effects at the end-of-life stage.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.41-76
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• 2020

This study confirmed factors affecting smart factory technology acceptance through empirical analysis. It is a study on what factors have an important influence on the introduction of the smart factory, which is the core field of the 4th industry. I believe that there is academic and practical significance in the context of insufficient research on technology acceptance in the field of smart factories. This research was conducted based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), whose explanatory power has been proven in the study of the acceptance factors of information technology. In addition to the four independent variables of the UTAUT : Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social Influence, and Facilitating Conditions, Government Assistance Expectancy, which is expected to be an important factor due to the characteristics of the smart factory, was added to the independent variable. And, in order to confirm the technical factors of smart factory technology acceptance, the Task Technology Fit(TTF) was added to empirically analyze the effect on Behavioral Intention. Trust is added as a parameter because the degree of trust in new technologies is expected to have a very important effect on the acceptance of technologies. Finally, empirical verification was conducted by adding Innovation Resistance to a research variable that plays a role as a moderator, based on previous studies that innovation by new information technology can inevitably cause refusal to users. For empirical analysis, an online questionnaire of random sampling method was conducted for incumbents of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises, and 309 copies of effective responses were used for empirical analysis. Amos 23.0 and Process macro 3.4 were used for statistical analysis. For accurate statistical analysis, the validity of Research Model and Measurement Variable were secured through confirmatory factor analysis. Accurate empirical analysis was conducted through appropriate statistical procedures and correct interpretation for causality verification, mediating effect verification, and moderating effect verification. Performance Expectancy, Social Influence, Government Assistance Expectancy, and Task Technology Fit had a positive (+) effect on smart factory technology acceptance. The magnitude of influence was found in the order of Government Assistance Expectancy(β=.487) > Task Technology Fit(β=.218) > Performance Expectancy(β=.205) > Social Influence(β=.204). Both the Task Characteristics and the Technology Characteristics were confirmed to have a positive (+) effect on Task Technology Fit. It was found that Task Characteristics(β=.559) had a greater effect on Task Technology Fit than Technology Characteristics(β=.328). In the mediating effect verification on Trust, a statistically significant mediating role of Trust was not identified between each of the six independent variables and the intention to introduce a smart factory. Through the verification of the moderating effect of Innovation Resistance, it was found that Innovation Resistance plays a positive (+) moderating role between Government Assistance Expectancy, and technology acceptance intention. In other words, the greater the Innovation Resistance, the greater the influence of the Government Assistance Expectancy on the intention to adopt the smart factory than the case where there is less Innovation Resistance. Based on this, academic and practical implications were presented.