• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.95-111
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• 2023

Korea has achieved a high startup rate by promoting government-led startup policies for national economic and industrial development. However, as high as the startup rate is, the closure rate of startup companies can be judged to be insufficient for the qualitative growth of the domestic startup ecosystem. This study aims to investigate how to improve the survival rate of startups by overcoming the valley of death from a location environment perspective. It analyzes the effects of technology orientation and market orientation of start-ups on management performance and the moderating effects of economic, accessibility, and network factors that constitute the location environment. To achieve the research objectives, the empirical analysis was conducted on start-up companies that received corporate support projects from innovation intermediary organizations. The results show that R&D capability of technology orientation has a significant effect on management performance, and market information generation and market information response of market orientation have a significant effect on management performance. As for the moderating effect, accessibility, a sub-factor of the location environment, has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between technological innovation and managerial performance, and the location environment (economy, accessibility, and network) has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between market information generation and managerial performance. This study compared and analyzed previous studies on the success and failure of start-ups and identified common factors. In addition, this study provides policy implications for the sustainable growth of startups through empirical analysis and interview with stakeholders. For future research, it is necessary to compare and analyze start-ups in metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan areas. In addition, it is necessary to study startups that have moved out of the region and into the metropolitan area to find ways to develop the regional startup ecosystem.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.81-88
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• 2014

Purpose - Entrepreneurship promotion is emerging as an important economic growth agenda. However, in Korea, entrepreneurship has weakened because of the collapse of the venture bubbles of the 2000s and the global economic recession in 2008, which have induced the business community to choose stability over risk. The Korean government has been implementing several support projects to inspire and promote youth entrepreneurship through various means including financial assistance; however, the perpetuation rate of young entrepreneurship is still low as compared to advanced economies such as the US and EU. This case study focuses on the Youth Start-Up Business Support Program of the Small & Medium Business Corporation, and explores practical alternatives. Further, it aims to suggest managerial factors and a conceptual model for change management factors affecting the business performance creation of a startup company, based on the Small and medium Business Corporation's young venture startup fund. Research design, data, and methodology - Many studies examine the current progress and issues of startup firms, for example, a lack of systematic cultivation of entrepreneurship and startup business training, lack of commercialization funding for youth startup businesses, lack of mentoring, and inadequate infrastructure. From prior research, we address four factors, namely, personal managerial capabilities, innovative business model, sufficient cash flow, and social network, affecting startup companies' business performance. This study involved a sample survey of 200 young entrepreneurs to investigate casual relations between the four factors and business performance. A regression analysis was used to verify the hypotheses. Results - First, in relation to differences in the founder's personal characteristics, age, sales amount, and number of employees significantly impact business performance. Second, regarding the causal relation between the four factors for creating business performance, an innovative business model and social networking have supported the hypotheses, revealing that the more that a start-up founder has an innovative business model and social networking, the more the start-up firms are likely to have better performance (e.g., sales volume, employment, ROE, ROI, etc.). Although the founder's competency and sufficient cash flow have no significant relationship with business performance, the mean value was higher performance for high founder's competency and sufficient cash flow. Conclusions - This study provides basic data on policy support strategies of the Small and Medium Business Corporation, to help young entrepreneurs achieve their start-up business goals. It shows that young entrepreneurship startup firms should strive to explore ideas to satisfy customers' needs, and that changes in customer value and the continuous innovation of business model differentiation are required to actively respond to change management. Moreover, at the infant startup stage, they should activate social network programs to share information, thereby offsetting resource scarcity and managing business risk. Further, the establishment of a long-term vision and the implementation of training programs in related specific fields should be supported to strengthen founders' personal capabilities.

• International Journal of Costume and Fashion
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.65-83
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamics of the newly emerging designer fashion market and examine how startup designers reacted to the tension between creativity and business, and how they grew within such dynamics. In-depth interviews were conducted with 22 DFE entrepreneurs and 7 fashion industry experts. The grounded theory was used to analyze data and yield results. Korean new generation of DFEs, attracted by the growing online market opportunities are directly distributing through online channels, targeting the millennial consumers who are pursuing new values at new distribution channels. They show new growth pattern, start with a few key items in the middle and lower price segments, then upscale their design, quality, and price. This study further investigated designers' enterprise orientation shift, which was explored by Mills. Some creativity-oriented designers encountered difficulties in the orientation shift, while designers who demonstrated business characteristics from the startup stage restored the balance by trying to improve both creativity and business. This study discovered a new way for the designer to enter the growth stage. This growth approach is one of the success strategies applicable to designers launching a brand on online platforms in the global market.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2015

This paper discusses entrepreneurship as a mean to overcome problems that arise from economic growth with no job growth and with aging population. In particular, this paper focuses on senior (elderly) entrepreneurship based on technology. It examines and defines restraints of various public and private sponsor programs for senior entrepreneurship. In comparison, Bridge Program of Finland was studied and its success factors are presented. Some of these success factors are enterprise-driven program operation, diverse education program focused on successful senior entrepreneurship, providing networking opportunities among entrepreneurs, and increased awareness in social responsibility of private enterprises. This paper suggests CBI (Corporate Business Incubator) in order to promote senior entrepreneurship. This study is expected to foster economic growth and job creation through utilizing increased elderly population in today's aging demographics. In addition, this study will be able to identify direction for government's role in boosting senior entrepreneurship.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.125-141
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• 2020

This study examines the effect of founders' strategic orientation and social capital on the performance of startups in Korean contexts. Founders' strategic orientation is proposed as the main factor to reduce the risk of failure and to increase the potential of future growth of the startup. Three main components of strategic orientation, entrepreneurial, market, technology, were simultaneously tested with a sample of Korean startups. Furthermore, founders' social capital, networks with supporting entities and the level of chemistry within founding members were also proposed to be important factors. We also tested possible mediating effects of social capital on the main impact of strategic orientation. With a sample of 79 startups founded less than 5 years in Seoul Metropolitan Areas, we found that technology orientation of founders only significantly increases the performance of startups, but both entrepreneurial and market orientation do not. Regarding social capital effect, the external networks of the founding members are effective as proposed, and also the high cohesiveness of founding members increases the startup performance. However, the mediating role of social capital is just partially confirmed. The implications of our findings, in both sense of firm's strategy and startup policy, are discussed. This study is expected to be a bridge connecting firms' strategy with startup policy-making in Korea.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.113-120
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• 2016

Technology based would-be entrepreneurs have constantly increased as coming with increasing demands for technology based startup. However, technology based startup need to go through throne field in the preparation and launching process. This paper help technology based would be entrepreneurs recognizing and pivoting all potential fatal flaws covering entrepreneurs to BM with strategies by providing self check-up lists. This paper have developed all check list based upon the previous literature reviews about technology commercialization with carrying Focused Group Interview with mentor and investor involved in the early stage of venture growth. In particular, this paper have applied these tools over 104 participants(would-be entrepreneur and entrepreneurs in the early startup) attending in Hanbat Startup Item Validation Program and Startup Leading University program. This paper developed the mega categories of list as follows: Entrepreneurship, technology and patent, target customer and market, product, BM and strategy. It also developed 17 different concept of components and 58 specific sub-lists under maga list. The research results of paper will provide solid foundation of communication with participants about checking up their state of preparation for startup as applying to mentoring for would-be entrepreneurs and to entrepreneurship education.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.101-114
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• 2022

Recently, various studies on the entrepreneurial ecosystem have been conducted. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is composed of various elements such as entrepreneurs, governments, and infrastructure, and these factors interact to contribute to economic development. The purpose of this study was to analyze differences in importance and performance of the entrepreneurial ecosystem for startups using the importance-performance analysis (IPA) method. Based on this, the importance and current level of the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem were identified and policy implications were presented. The results of the study are as follows. The importance ranking was in the order of startup support program(4.43), startup funding (4.39), market accessibility(4.30). The ranking of performance was startup support program(3.81), ease of starting a business(3.76), support for startup support institutions(3.66), and startup funding(3.66). All elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem showed higher importance than performance. This means that the components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Korea are recognized as important, but do not play a significant role in terms of performance for startups. In addition, the factors with the highest improvement in the importance-performance matrix were 「safety nets for startup failure」, 「culture of acceptance of failure」, 「ease of market entry」, 「ease of startup survival」, and 「ease of exit」. This study suggested improvement measures such as establishing a social safety net, improving awareness of startup failure culture, matching successful startups, strengthening scale-up support by growth stage, easing regulations in new business fields, and diversifying investment recovery strategies.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.59-75
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• 2024

As the 4th Industrial Revolution progresses, the importance of startups was increasingly emphasized. Nevertheless, the five-year survival rate of Korean startups was lower than that of OECD countries. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between agile leadership, learning agility, and organizational performance of startups under the premise that organizational performance was most important for startups to achieve sustainable growth. For the empirical analysis, agile leadership was set as an independent variable, learning agility was set as a mediating variable, and organizational performance was set as a dependent variable. Data was collected from startup employees across the country, and 197 valid samples were selected for analysis. The empirical analysis used Process Macro 4.2. As a result of the empirical analysis, agile leadership was found to have a significant positive effect on startup organizational performance. Additionally, agile leadership had a positive (+) effect on learning agility, and learning agility had a positive (+) effect on startup organizational performance. As a result of analyzing the mediating effect of learning agility, learning agility was found to play a mediating role between agile leadership and organizational performance. Academically, these research results tested the usefulness of agile leadership suited to the startup culture among various leadership styles that can improve the organizational performance of startups. In practical terms, such agile leadership not only directly affects organizational performance, but also through the learning agility of startup employees. This means that by creating a culture of learning agility that encourages startup employees to continuously learn and adapt, startups can increase their chances of survival and success.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.1-15
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• 2016

Startups in Korea are experiencing for themselves the laws of survival through competition in the local and international market, and are performing active business movements based on these. Korea's economic growth rate is 2.6% due to the slump in the domestic demand and reduced exports brought by the MERSC incident in 2015. The Korea Development Institute has estimated the economic growth rate in 2016 to be around 3.0%. South Korea's economy is facing the crisis of low-growth solidification due to the decrease in economic growth, and it is forecasted that growth without employment and polarization will worsen. Startups in the high-tech industrial generation of a particular field wherein the market environment is rapidly changing must maintain a competitive advantage with the capabilities and functions exclusive to them. It is very important that they maintain a competitive edge by utilizing the capabilities exclusive to startup companies. Likewise, the accumulation of resources is also crucial in determining the success of a startup business. In a poor local startup ecosystem, majority of the startup companies are performing their business activities while striving for survival, rather than success. About 80% are struggling to survive and are failing to overcome the "Death Valley" faced 3-5 years after establishing the company. Since majority of the startups fail to achieve results during the initial stages of foundation, the importance of research on business activities and achievement during the early stages of establishment is being raised. In accordance to this, this research has performed an actual analysis on how the activities of startups during their preparation phase and early stages affect their achievements. A survey was done on the CEOs or executives (people in a position to make decisions) of local small and medium-sized enterprises that are considered start-ups, and 203 valid data were collected and analyzed. Results showed that the discoveries and utilized activities necessary for the businesses of startups have a significant impact on their achievement through the entrepreneur resources and external partners' cooperation; additionally, the related implications were discussed.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.131-144
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• 2021

The organizational ambidexterity is an organizational strategy designed to pursue exploration activities to seize new opportunities and exploitation activities to efficiently use resources. Most of these ambidextrous structures have been studied for large corporations with slack resources, and there are still not many studies on the necessity of an ambidextrous structure for startups with relatively low-level resources. However, recently, the startup ecosystem is being advanced globally, and the amount of VC investment is rapidly increasing. This is a time when a lot of venture fund is invested in startups and a startup-friendly environment for rapid growth is created. This is the time to discuss the necessity and applicability of an ambidextrous organizational structure for startups. Therefore, this study conducted a hypothesis test whether the importance and necessity of balance that startups solving market problems with new ideas and utilizing accumulated resources have. To conduct this study, we analyzed 140 startups data gathered from the survey and the moderation effect was also analyzed. As a result of the study, it was verified that the balance of startup exploration and exploitation had a significant effect on startup performance, and the moderating effect of environmental dynamics was found to have a significant effect on the relationship with non-financial performance. Therefore, for startups with insufficient resources, it was concluded that the surplus resources generated in the process of a firm's growth should be effectively utilized and the balance between exploration and exploitation should be balanced from the initial stage of searching for a new business. In other words, it was confirmed that it is important for continuous growth and survival to seek the structure of an ambidextrous organization in order to internalize a mechanism that enables startups to pursue both effectiveness and efficiency in the long term. This study suggests a strategic direction for the growth of startups from the perspective of organizational structure. We expect that this meaningful results on the relationship between the ambidextrous capabilities of startups and performance contribute to the growth of startups in the rapidly growing startup venture environment.