• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.272-281
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• 2016

The effective exploitation of resources is critical for startup firms with insufficient resources to compete with well-resourced large firms. The direction and consistency of the resource input should be retained to utilize resources effectively, which will lead to a necessity for a fit between the strength in resources and the strategy of a firm. This study suggests hypotheses and verifies them empirically based on the logic that the attribute of resources in which a firm with a core competence decides the type of strategy and the formulated strategy presents the direction of the resource input, which enables the effective utilization of resources and facilitates high performance. According to the statistical results, the R&D capability affects the innovative differentiation strategy, marketing capability affects marketing differentiation strategy, and financial and production capability affects low cost strategy, in which the efficacy of the strategy depends on the attribute of resources. In addition, the R&D capability and marketing capability adversely affect the low cost strategy and the production capability negatively affects the innovative differentiation strategy, which implies that the exclusive choice of a strategy by the strength in resources results in improved performance. These results show that the fit between the resource and strategy is an essential cause of high performance in venture businesses.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.137-157
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• 2017

As unemployment rises and economic growth slows, interest in startups, which is considered to be the driving force of job creation, is increasing. This study aimed to analyze the employment effects of knowledge-based startups in South Korea. In particular, startups were divided into three categories (knowledge-based manufacturing, knowledge-based service, and other industries) and the region were divided into the capital region and the other regions. The result of the analysis, which used census on Establishments Data from Statistics Korea(KOSIS), showed that the employment effects of startups change in three steps over time. When new firms were created, employment increases instantly. However, as the competition among firms increases, some firms exit the market and employment decreases. In the long-term, some firms will survive the market competition and increase their firm size and the number of jobs they offer. The total employment effect was greater for knowledge-based startups than the other industries startups. The total employment effect of knowledge-based startups are 2.84%p for the period of 6 years. Startups in the Capital region showed higher employment effect than startups in other regions. This implies that in the capital region, employment increases more after the startups are created, but due to fierce competition, employment also decreases relatively more than it does in other regions. However, companies that survive competition create more employment. This study may give some policy implications that startup policies should be tailored to the startup's type and regional characteristics in order to achieve more effective job creation performance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.51-78
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• 2021

Followed by 'start-up', the theme of 'scale-up' has been considered as an important agenda in both corporate and policy spheres. In particular, although it is a term commonly used in industry and policy fields, even a conceptual definition has not been achieved from the academic perspective. "Corporate Growth" in the academic aspect and "Business Growth" in the practical management field have different understandings (Achtenhagen et al., 2010). Previous research on corporate growth has not departed from Penrose(1959)'s "Firm as a bundle of resources" and "the role of managers". Based on the theory and background of economics, existing research has mainly examined factors that contribute to firms' growth and their growth patterns. Comparatively, we lack knowledge on the firms' growth with a focus on 'annual revenue growth rate'. In the early stage of the firms, they tend to exhibit a high growth rate as it started with a lower level of annual revenue. However, when the firms reach annual revenue of more than 100 billion KRW, a threshold to be classified as a 'middle-standing enterprise' by Korean standards, they are unlikely to reach a high level of revenue growth rate. In our study, we used our sample of 333 companies (6.7% out of 5,000 'fastest-growing' companies) which reached 15% of the compound annual growth rate in the last three years with more than USD 100 million. It shows that sustaining 'high-growth' above a certain firm size is difficult. The study focuses on firms with annual revenue of more than $100 billion (approximately 120 billion KRW) from the 'Inc. 2020 fast-growing companies 5,000' list. The companies have been categorized into 1) Fast-growing companies (revenue CAGR 15%~40% between 2016 and 2019), 2) Hyper-growing companies (40%~99.9%), and 3) Super-growing (100% or more) with in-depth analysis of each group's characteristics. Also, the relationship between the revenue growth rate, individual company's strategy choice (market orientation, generic strategy, growth strategy, pioneer strategy), industry/market environment, and firm age is investigated with a quantitative approach. Through conducting the study, it aims to provide a reference to the 'Hyper-Growing Model' that combines the paths and factors of growth strategies. For policymakers, our study intends to provide a reference to which factors or environmental variables should be considered for 'optimal effective combinations' to promote firms' growth.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.81-100
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• 2016

Much effort has been exerted to analyze online texts and understand how empirical results can help improve sales performance. In this research, we aim to extend this stream of research by decomposing online texts based on text sources, namely, companies and consumers. To be specific, we investigate how online texts driven by companies differ from those generated by consumers, and the extent to which both types of online texts have different effects on online sales. We obtained sales data from one of the biggest game publishers and merged them with online texts provided by companies using news articles and those created by consumers in user communities. The empirical analyses yield the following findings. Word visualization and topic analyses show that firms and consumers generate different contexts. Specifically, companies spread word to promote their own events whereas consumers produce online words to share winning strategies. Moreover, online sales are influenced by consumer-generated community topics whereas firm-driven topics in news articles have little to no effect. These findings suggest that companies should focus more on online texts generated by consumers rather than spreading their own words. Moreover, online sales strategies should take advantage of specific topics that have been proven to increase online sales. In particular, these findings give startup companies and small business owners in variety of industries the advantage when they use the online channel for distribution and as a marketing platform.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.135-148
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• 2020

Even after successful technology development, there are many cases where commercialization fails due to difficulties in financing in the early stages of commercialization. The purpose of this study is to give practical implications to technology-based founders. At the beginning of commercialization, 7 companies that succeeded in procuring different types of external funds were selected to conduct case analysis. The results are as follow. First, it was confirmed that the excellence of technology is the most important. Second, it was confirmed that they were majors in the relevant technology field or have worked in related fields, and concluded that greater synergy effect can be created by adding the founder's business will and active attitude. Third, even if the company's internal capabilities were insufficient, it was possible to succeed in financing by identifying and utilizing external financial information. Fourth, it is necessary to utilize a linked financial system that receives both loans and investments. Fifth, systematic IR (Investor Relation) should be continued.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.83-126
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• 2023

The revenue histogram of venture businesses is shifting from bell-shaped normal distribution to power-law distribution, which implies that the fitness landscape of the venture businesses ecosystem is changing to be more rugged terrain. We argue that the firm should adopt both exploitation (fast follower) and exploration (or first mover) strategies not to get stuck in local maxima in the rugged fitness landscape from the complex system perspective. By designing and performing agent-based modeling simulation experiments which consist of three types of agents (new technologies, entrepreneurs, and consumers), we demonstrated that the ambidexterity strategy showed the highest performance score in three of four different environment except 'Fast Widening' case where the exploitation strategy showed the highest performance score under low technology appropriation and fast disruptive technology development speed. By investigating the financial and other statistics of 617 top venture businesses who have earned 100B won or higher annual revenue, we concluded that 82% and 9% of firms are bent on the exploitation and exploration strategy.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.1-14
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• 2021

Innovation and Scale-up of Start-up companies are becoming important national tasks. In the past, it was spread the start-up policy paradigm such as 'Start-up America', 'Start-up Chile', 'Start-up Britain' to overcome the recession globally. However as the economic recovery has become more visible recently in advanced economies, it is shifting from a start-up support policy to a scale-up oriented policy paradigm such as 'Scale-up America', Scale-up UK', 'Scale-up Denmark'. It is necessary to enter the scale-up phase beyond the start-up phase to increase the number of high-quality jobs and to continue economic growth. Therefore, it is necessary to grow the start-up into a strong medium-sized company and to lay the foundation for survival. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to consider the antecedent factors that influence the scale-up aspiration for the start-up firm to grow into a scale-up company, and empirically identifies the differences between the stages of economic development and entrepreneurs in the country. In order to accomplish the purpose, this study predicted scale-up by aspiration which is a predictor of scale-up behavior because it is difficult to achieve visible growth in a short period of time due to the characteristics of start-up companies. In order to empirically explore these relationships, the data were collected from nascent entrepreneurs who have less than 3.5 years of the Adult Population Survey(APS) among the subjects surveyed by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor(GEM) and the national economic development stage are divided into Innovation-driven, Efficiency-driven, Factor-driven type economies. For the test hypotheses, this study adopted the multi-level model analysis for comparison between national economic development stages and using the R 3.5.0 program. The results of this study are as follows. There is difference between the national economic development and the entrepreneur in the relationship between innovation orientation of entrepreneurs and scale-up aspirations. As the economy of the country develops, the innovation activity of the entrepreneur becomes more active. Since start-ups are heavily influenced by entrepreneurs, there is a difference in the degree of aspiration depending on how innovative an entrepreneur is in the same environment. In terms of the relationship between innovation orientation and scale-up aspiration, the fear of failure was found to differ between national economic development and entrepreneurs. The fear of failure differ from country to country, and this is one of the important factors affecting entrepreneurial activities. It is expected that the factors influencing the growth of the start-up companies which are identified through the results of these studies, will be used to create a suitable scale-up ecosystem according to the national economic development stage.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.49-62
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• 2016

Technology-based start-ups have great economic ripple effect such as economic growth and job creation. Therefore, a strategic approach is required in order for such start-ups to continuously grow. However, many technology-based start-ups do not survive the Death-Valley and are being eliminated from the market. This is an empirical study on influencing variables that have impact on their performance. This study presents growth intention and influencing variables that have impact on performance (financial performance, technological performance) based on previous research on technology-based start-up. Also, this study examines the relationship between entrepreneurial competence, team commitment and growth intention, and finds the effect of controlling business-network. Structural equation modeling was performed in order to test the research hypothesis. Survey was conducted on the firms that have been certified by Youth Startup Academy of Small and Medium Business Corporation. A total of 306 samples were collected from the survey. An empirical test was conducted on the research hypothesis using SPSS 21.0 and Amos 22.0. The result of hypothesis test shows that growth intention has positive influence on both financial and technological performance, and entrepreneurial competence (technological competence, strategic management competence, creative competence and team commitment) has positive influence on growth intention. Also, the research proved that business-network has regulation effect between human resource trait and growth intention. The result of our study will provide practical insight to future start-ups for continuous growth and successful running of their firm.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.21-46
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to find impacts of financial activities-financing and investment of Venture Firms during pre-listing periods on the firms' Venture Firm's listing(delisting). The several ratios financial variables relevant to the financing and investment were examined whether there are difference or not between two venture firms groups. The results of study can be summarized as follows. First, the firms of successful group have fewer numbers of equity financing and higher times of premium in issuing stocks than those of failed firms but there is no significant difference in the required time from startup to listing the KOSDAQ. Second, there is no significant difference in the ratio of capital increase in IPO between two groups but additional survey reveals that the successful firms financed equity in IPO by higher numbers of premium than failed firms, which can makes the major shareholder of the successful firms maintain high rayios share of stock. Third, the ratio of working capital investment of the successful firms is significantly higher than that of failed firms, on the other hand the failed firms' ratios of equipment and repayment investment are higher than those of successful firms. Finally, the ratio of R&D investment has no difference between two groups, this result is against the expectation, which is to be further analyzed.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.95-124
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• 2021

Startups play an important role in economic growth and job creation in niche markets, thus governments regularly expand their research and development(R&D) budgets accordingly. As stratups are more dependent on governments to compensate for insufficient resources and capabilities than large and medium-sized companies, trust in government policies will be important. In this study, we analyzed the impact of startups' trust in government R&D policies on innovation performance. There were three major results. The first result is that government R&D investments in startups increase innovation performance in the manufacturing and high-technology industries but did not affect other industries. The second result is that trust in government R&D policies increased innovation in high-and medium-high technology and manufacturing industries. The third result is that trust in government R&D policies affects innovation before, during, and after evaluation of support process. We analyzed the importance of trust to the effectiveness of government R&D support to determine how to effectively provide it. The results show that governments need to differentiate the types of R&D support they provide according to the target firm's technology level and whether they are a manufacturing company and that appropriate R&D support mechanism should be developed for low-technology and non-manufacturing companies. Finally, governments should allocate resources and make fair and transparent decisions to help companies grow, not to better supervise them.