• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.291-298
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• 2022

The most crucial elements of SME growth and development are performance and innovation. In actuality, SMEs find it challenging to enhance their performance and innovation due to limited access to resources. Collaboration with other SMEs in the form of local communities can be an alternative solution to gaining access to external resources. Unfortunately, not many studies have explored the role of the local SME community in the development of innovation and performance of SMEs. This study tries to fill this gap by examining the role of local communities in expanding SMEs' access to resources, in their efforts to improve innovation and performance. Data was collected using an online questionnaire distributed to food and beverage SMEs in Malang Regency. As many as 150 questionnaires were received and considered valid for statistical data analysis using the WarpPLS program. The results show that the SME community plays an important role in improving the innovation and performance of food and beverage SMEs. It is also found that innovation can be a good mediator of community relations with the performance of SMEs. Furthermore, it is also confirmed that the SME community moderates the relationship between innovation and the performance of food and beverage SMEs.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.175-189
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• 2020

Daejeon City has strived to support the SMEs to innovate technologies based on the capabilities of research and development of the Daedeok Innopolis. It is widely known that technological innovation is the key strategy of Small medium enterprises(SME) to survive and succeed in a market. This study aims to analyze the type and determinants of SME technological innovation in Daejeon. Even though most of firms are the small enterprises which employ less than 10 workers in Daejeon, the number of technology-oriented company per capita in Daejeon is highest in South Korea. The type of technological innovation is divided between product innovation and process innovation. The literature insists that technology-oriented small firm tends to implement product innovation rather than process innovation. SMEs in Daejeon also provided more output from product innovation than process innovation. The empirical analysis provided the results that the determinants of SME's technological innovation depends on its type. The scale of firm, R&D investment, and R&D employees positively influence product innovation of SMEs in Daejeon. However, the impact of R&D employees is not significant on innovating the existing product. Process innovation is positively affected by R&D investment and firm age. The study provides the policy implications to business supporting programs of Daejeon government. The business supporting policy of Daejeon government should focus on supporting each type of technological innovation to promote technological innovation by SME and consider strategies that focus on R&D investment and manpower support.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.378-395
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• 2019

This article is a suggestion for SME policy in Korea for the attention of the senior policy-experiencer of the whole nation, the Advisor to the President of Korea. This article is written from the perspective of technology policy experts, not SME experts. In spite of many SME policies, the issue of SMEs in Korea is worsening, not being resolved. Technology-oriented policies are effective for each company, but the role of SMEs is gradually decreasing in the Korean economy. Reflecting on this fact, I would like to suggest measures that include long-term, but social as well as educational. The solution I suggested is coexistence since sustainable growth through SMEs is not just an economic or social issue. It is a matter of survival. I propose four types of coexistence: corporate, local, human, and coexistence with nature. Getting coexistence works requires a change in social norms that mobilize even education.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.95-105
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• 2013

Recently, SME's Collaboration activities have become one of a vital factor for sustaining competitive edge. This is because of the rapidly changing and competitive market environment, and also to leverage performance by overcoming obstacles of having limited internal resources. Discussing about the effects and relationships of the firm's collaboration activities and its outputs are not new. However, as ICT and various technologies have been diffused into the traditional industries, boundaries and practice capabilities within the industries are becoming ambiguous. Thus contents of the products/services and their development methods are also go and come over the industries. Although many researchers suggested the relations of SME's collaboration activities and innovation performances, most of the previous literatures are focusing on broad perspectives of firm's environmental factors rather than considering various SME's idiosyncrasy factors such as their major product and customer types at once. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how SME(Small Medium Enterprise)'s external collaboration activities by their idiosyncrasy act as an input to types of innovation performance. In order to analyze collaboration effects in detail, we defined factors that can represent the SME's business environment - Perceived importance of using external resources, Perceived importance of external partnership, Collaboration and Collaboration levels of Major Product types, Customer types and lastly the Firm Sizes. We have also specifically divided the performance of innovation types as product innovation and process innovation based on existing research. In this study, the empirical analysis is based on Probit Regression Model to observe the correlations with the impact of each SME's business environment and their activities. For the empirical data, 497 samples were collected which, this sample data was extracted from the 'Korean Open Innovation Survey' performed by ETRI(Korean Electronics Telecommunications Research Institute) in 2010. As a result, empirical test results indicated that the impact of collaboration varies depend on the innovation types (Product and Process Innovation). The Impact of the collaboration level for the product innovation tend to be more effective when SMEs are developing for a final product, targeting on for individual customers (B2C). But on the other hand, the analysis result of the Process innovation tend to be higher than the product innovation, when SMEs are developing raw materials for their partners or to other firms targeting on for manufacturing industries(B2B). Also perceived importance of using external resources has effected to both product and process innovation performance. But Perceived importance of external partnership was statistically insignificant. Interesting finding was that the service product has negative effects on for the process innovation performance. And Relationship between size of the firms and their external collaboration activities with their performance of the innovations indicated that the bigger firms(over 100 of employees) tend to have better for both product and process innovations. Finally, implications of the results can be suggested as performance of innovation can be varied depends on firm's unique business idiosyncrasy as well as levels of external collaboration activities. The Implication of this research can be considered for firms in selecting an appropriate strategy as well as for policy makers.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.387-405
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to contemplate the environmental change of the fourth industrial revolution in viewpoint of SME, and to analyze the relevance between the fourth industrial revolution and SME, thereby reviewing the governmental supporting policy for SME. Promising fields of the fourth industrial revolution can be derived from WEF survey, manufacturing innovation, and new growth engine. Also the case of GE's movement could be a good reference. We explored the relevance between the fourth industrial revolution and SME supporting policy, and described the suitability as SME's next item among the various promising fields. When extracting new business items by using the factor of prospective and appropriate conditions, both types such as product or service and subordinate or derivative items would be possible. For the proper action to the fourth industrial revolution, not only the competence enhancing of SME itself but also positive supporting policy of government side are to be considered.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.693-705
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• 2012

It is increasing the necessity of technology cooperation between nations, in the world, more and more. The international cooperation for the technology development have the dissipating effect of costs and risks and encourage efficient use of the knowledge and eventually help the firms better access overseas market easily. The S&T diplomacy of Korea is, at present, on international S&T cooperation to secure technologies to strengthen base of science, technology and innovation. This tendency is closely related with the governance issue in international S&T cooperation. And This international S&T cooperation is connected with the internationalization of firms. But it is getting more difficult for a firm, especially smaller firm like Korean SME to sustain the technological advantage over any significant period. The small and medium sized enterprises as Korean SME, internationalization of R&D is difficult just to think in terms of one framework with the limited accumulation of informations and experiences. So against that situation, this paper shows a new concept 'SME co-ordinator' as the role client(or player) reinforcing international S&T cooperation, sustaining the technological advantage for Korean SME. And 'SME co-ordinator' leads Korean SME to progress 'open innovation' not 'close innovation' as well as serving adequate information about appropriate partners and capable employer to help manage the international S&T cooperation for Internationalization of Industrial R&D for Korean SME.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.57-82
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• 2022

As the strategy to support SMEs' innovation has shifted to induce market-oriented innovation, the Korean government increasingly invests in grant-type R&D projects proposed by SME firms. This study reveals the characteristics of grant-type R&D projects proposed by SME firms through a transition of national R&D strategy and demand-pull innovation perspectives. This study also examines the differences between grant-type R&D projects proposed by firms and R&D projects led by the government through logit-analysis and propensity score matching methods. As a result, we found that a national R&D project for SMEs yields better innovation performance when the project is proposed by a company than led by the government.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.157-171
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• 2014

This study has empirically analyzed the effect of government technology development supports on the performance of SME's (Small-and-Medium-Sized Enterprises). To analyze the effects of government technology development supports on the performance of SME's, this paper collected data from 271 Korean SMEs and tested hypothesis on the key questions. The result shows that government technology development supports had a meaningful positive effect on the performance of SMEs in terms of innovation. It was also understood that the closer the ties were with large enterprises, the higher the R&D personnel ratio was. Furthermore, when the SME was a certified venture, the government technology development supports had less influence on the SME's technological innovation. On the other hand, SME's technological innovation performance in relation to the government supports showed an improvement when the business environment of SME's was hostile. This study offers theoretical and practical implications, as it more accurately analyses the effect of government technology development supports on the performance of SME's, for which data were collected and analyzed for the same companies two separate times. Last of all, the limitation of this study is discussed in terms of the sample selection, data collection method, variables measurement method, etc.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.417-427
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• 2019

This article puts forward the opinion of a policy expert, who had been involved in Korea's science and technology policy for 30 years, about technology policy for SMEs. This article first explains why technology policies for SMEs are needed, and from what point of view. The next section looks at the current problems facing Korean SMEs, followed by the introduction of past and current polices to support SMEs. The comparison between current issues facing SMEs and past and current policies leads to lessons that can be learned. There are four lessons for the policy itself and three for the implementation of these policies. As for policy, the first four are about stages of development, concentration, R&D and diffusion, and policy mix. The latter three are policymakers, institutional building, and cooperation between ministries. This article makesfour suggestions for future policy: the importance of startups' culture, cooperation with others, infrastructure to reduce uncertainty, and policy monitoring and evaluation.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.133-144
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• 2007

Quality management has been applied to the industry for strengthening the competitiveness regardless of the size of company. However, it has been argued that the operational models for quality management used in the large-sized enterprise could not be applied to the small & medium-sized enterprise (SME) directly. This paper analyzes the states and outcomes of movements for quality innovation in the SME and tries to give some suggestions for improving and spreading the movements within the framework of the cooperation with the large sized company. Survey results show that the preferable quality movements depends on the size of company. Especially, the Single PPM movement is most preferable in the SME. It contributes th decreasing the fraction defective and to vitalizing the communication and cooperation between large-sized company and SME.