• 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.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.531-546
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• 2022

This study analyzes the performance and characteristics of the fostering policies for the focusing on growth path and type occupied in the Technoparks. First, the companies occupied in the Technoparks have shown the characteristics of landing on an actual growth phase beyond the start-up and fostering phases, and when considering the possession of a dedicated R&D organization and the portion of highly educated technical personnel having masters and doctorate degrees, these companies have also entailed the characteristics of being a technological innovation company. Second, about 30% of the companies that left the Technoparks secured their own factories and offices after standing alone, indicating that the fostering function after startup in the Technoparks has been performing a significant role on the growth path of start-up companies from a temporal perspective. Third, a majority of the companies occupied in the Technoparks were composed of scale-up companies or preliminary scale-up companies that contained promising innovative growth potential. However, it seems to urgently require the acceleration of innovation because many companies are categorized into a stagnated growth type that demonstrates a high R&D investment but low sales revenue growth.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.81-97
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• 2022

This paper's purpose is to get hold of the recent research trend by analyzing the variables uesd in startups related papers. The startups related papers in this paper are the papers which include 'startups' in the title of the registered papers from the year 2013 to the year 2020. This study's analysis methods are text-mining of all variables and text-network analysis of affected variables. Visualizing tool for network analysis is Gephi. The result of variables' analysis is as follows. First, independent variables consist mainly of variables about startups' internal factors and outside environment, but due to startups' features like early stage company's features, innovative features, most of variables are about enterprise internal competitiveness, marketing 4P strategy, entrepreneurship, coopreation method, transformational leadership, enterprise features, lean startup strategy, enterprise internal communication, value orientation, task conflict, relationship conflict, knowledge sharing, etc. Second, dependent variables are mainly about outcome, and are classified into financial performance and non-financial performance by overall concept. In other words, startups related papers have higher interest in non-financial performance, like management performance, team performance, SCM performance as well as financial performance like sales quantity owing to startups' immaturity in getting good financial performance. Through this study we can find out as follows. Although there are not many officially registered papers dealing with startups, those papers include various themes about stratups. For example, there are trendy themes like lean startups strategy, crowdfunding, influencer and accelerator, etc.

• Journal of Venture Innovation
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.49-65
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• 2018

For a long time the German economy was primarily defined by large corporations and thriving small and medium-sized enterprises. Since about 2005 a second strand has started to emerge and it is one which is becoming increasingly important and is creating jobs - start-ups in the digital sector. This start-up activity is taking an important role in Germany's economic development: Start-up companies spawn innovations and create jobs, thus promoting the concept of competition. In general "start-up" refers to digitally-driven companies that are not more than five years old. Germany's start-up policy consists of three main parts. First of all, Germany has the characteristics of technology-based start-ups. The Hartz reform since 2002 has shown its focus on technology-based start-ups. In particular, it is the most appropriate for a start-up company to take the role of a new technology company to respond to changes in the global industrial structure. Second, it is approaching from a long-term perspective. In this regard, the small business policy, including Germany's new business policy, is seen as a tradition that can be consistent and can make policy decisions based on the basics rather than following the times. Third, the government is implementing policies centered on demand. Germany's start-up policy is summarized as a technology-based policy and new job creation. The policy response is that the government seeks the best combination of policies by adapting them to the times from the broad trend of employment market policies. What is important here is that policies are made based on consumers, not suppliers, in the process of policy making and implementation. With the Digital Agenda 2020 the Federal government has likewise committed itself to preparing the digital economy for international competition and making Germany the "No. 1 digital growth country in Europe". Ever since 1998 the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) has awarded the "EXIST" start-up scholarship to students and graduates. The Ministry also invests in the High Tech start-up fund. Together with Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and 18 other investors from the world of business the seed investor promotes young technology companies. Germany offers start-ups a good infrastructure and lots of funding opportunities. Berlin is regarded as Europe's start-up capital and also attracts lots of international young entrepreneurs.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.55-73
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• 2024

Unicorn companies are attracting attention around the world as they are recognized for their high corporate value in a short period of time as an innovative business models. Their growth process presents good lessons for the startup ecosystem and have a positive impact on national economic development and job creation. However, previous studies related to unicorn companies are focused on 'event studies' and 'case studies' such as characteristics of founders, environmental factors, business models and success/failure cases of companies already recognized as unicorns rather than a multifaceted approach. The occurrence of unicorn companies and Macroscopic analysis of related factors is lacking. Against this background, this study are considering the characteristics of unicorns examined through previous research and the current status unicorns with a high proportion of technology companies, the purpose was to analyze the impact of the country's technological competitiveness, such as 'technology human resource index', 'R&D index', and 'technology infrastructure index', on the increase in unicorn companies. For statistical analysis, data published by various international organizations, the Bank of Korea, and Statistics Korea from 2017 to 2020 and unicorn company data compiled by CB Insights were used as panel data for 44 countries to be tested by multiple regression analysis. As a result of the study, it was confirmed that the number of science majors had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies in the case of technology human resource index, and in the case of R&D index, the total amount of R&D investment had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies, while the number of Triad Patents Families and the number of scientific and technological papers published had a negative (-) effect on the increase of unicorn companies. Finally, in the case of technology infrastructure index, it was confirmed that the number of the world's 500th-ranked universities had a positive (+) effect on the increase of unicorn companies. This study is the first to reveal the causal relationship between national technological competitiveness and unicorn company growth based on country-specific and time-series empirical data, which were insufficiently covered in previous studies. and compared to the UN's ranking of the global industrial competitiveness index and the OECD's total R&D investment by country, Korea is considered to have technological and growth potential, while the number of unicorn companies driving growth as leaders of the innovative economy is relatively small, so the research results can be used when establishing policies to discover and foster unicorn companies in the future.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.29-43
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• 2019

This paper empirically analyzed the relationship between the characteristics of venture business founders and management performance, setting the management strategy as a parameter to provide a suggestion for the survival and development of venture companies that play an important role in the national economy and job creation. Previous studies in Korea have analyzed the relationship between the characteristics of business founders, management strategies and management performance in a single dimension. This paper, however, explained the business performance of a company from a multi-dimensional perspective while setting the characteristics of business founders as independent variables and setting the business strategy of the enterprise as a parameter. The first result of the analysis shows that the characteristics of venture business founders have a positive effect on business performance. In particular, among the characteristics of venture business founders, a progressive spirit has had the greatest impact on business performance. On the other hand, the influence of risk sensitivity was very weak. Second, the characteristics of venture business founders were found to have a positive effect on business strategy. In particular, innovation was an important variable that affected the technological innovation differentiation strategy, and a progressive spirit was the most influential factor in the marketing differentiation strategy. Third, management strategies of venture firms were found to have a positive effect on business performance. In particular, the technology innovation differentiation strategy has a greater impact on business performance than the marketing differentiation strategy. Fourth, it was revealed that management strategy partially has a mediated effect on the relationship between the characteristics of venture business founders and management performance. In other words, it was found that the characteristics of the founders have a direct impact on business performance but if it is linked to management strategy it has an indirect effect on business performance. The results of this study show that business performance improves when venture business founders' personal characteristics and the firms' management strategy are combined.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.59-76
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• 2019

Most technology-based entrepreneurship(TBE) go through an process of decline or disappear without overcoming the valley of death(VoD). The purpose of this study is to identify the growth dimension of TBE and to test the influence of firms activities on firms growth over time. This study identified the two-dimensional growth dimension divided by size and profit through exploratory factor analysis(EFA) of a number of growth indicators. Then, we defined the discrete state of growth firm in four states, divided by size and profit, and five states, including the closure of business. Multi-nomial logit model is used to predict the effect of TBE activities on a discrete state of growth firm(size×profit, closure of business) based on multiple independent variables. The independent variables are based on five representative firms activities: employment, marketing, R&D, financial activities, and general management activities. The growth stage of TBE over time has been categorized into three stages: early stage, middle stage, and late stage of business, taking into account the main periods during which the survival rate of startups sharply decreases. The analytical data of this study was based on the secondary data of the start-up supporting companies of government and public institutions. The subjects of analysis were TBE within 10 years. As a result of the empirical analysis, the employment and marketing activities of TBE show that early and mid-term activities had an effect on the state of firms growth. However, if there is a difference, employment activities have both positive and negative effects, while marketing activities have only a positive effect on size and profit growth. And besides, R&D activities, financial activities, and general management activities throughout the entire process of firms growth were found to be firms activities that have both positive and negative effects on firms growth. In addition, the age of the founder, the firms' industry, and the geographic location of the firms, which are general characteristics of the company, were found to have a distinctive effect on the growth status of the firms according to the growth stage.

• 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.