• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.179-192
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• 2024

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of entrepreneurial experience, business model innovation and financing on new venture performance. Design/methodology/approach - This study analyzes survey data on new ventures in Korea and investigated research hypothesis by multiple regression analysis. Findings - Founders' prior startup experience have different impacts on performance depending on whether they had a successful or failed startup. Successful experience has a positive impact on early performance, while failure experience has a negative impact. Business model innovation shows a positive and significant relationship with early performance. External financing has different effects depending on the type of funding source and performance variables. VC funding is positively related to employment creation, while government R&D funding is negatively related to sales volume. Research implications or Originality - This study confirms that the impact of entrepreneurial experience on early performance varies depending on the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. It also empirically confirms that business model innovation has a significant impact on early performance. We empirically examine the relationship between various external financing sources of venture firms and early performance. Since the effects of entrepreneurial experience, business model innovation, and external financing on early stage performance may be different, entrepreneurs should consider these relationships when pursuing early stage business opportunities.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.197-216
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• 2019

The Korean government has been focusing on supporting technology startups to solve social and economic problems such as low growth, declining economic growth rate, rising youth unemployment rate and lack of new growth engine. Although the failure rate of young technology startups is very high, relevant researches are still scant. On the basis of previous researches, this study has identified four growth factors of technology startups: characteristics of entrepreneurs, technical superiority and originality of business items, focused marketing strategy, and follow-up government support projects. Five young technology startup cases were selected and analyzed in the cosmetics industry which were supported by the Six-month Challenge Platform project of Chungbuk Creation Economic Innovation Center. The main findings of the case study were as follows: First, product development through inhouse R&D rather than external contracted R&D was beneficial to acquiring follow-up government support projects and external investment. Second, choosing a small niche market and concentrating marketing efforts on the target market had a positive effect on firm performance. And, third, relevance of entrepreneurs' college major and technological originality of business items were confirmed to influence firm performance positively in the early stage. The results are expected to help young technology startups survive successfully and establish a foothold for growth in their early stage.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.41-53
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• 2014

There has been lots of discussions and new policies to encourage people to start new businesses. However, they key issue such as how to raise the success rate of new start-ups still needs to be resolved. Many believe that the success of policies and discussions for promoting entrepreneurship in Korea highly depends on how to lower the risks with which early stage start-ups encounter. In this backdrop, this study aims at providing an emerging approaches in entrepreneurship, 'lean start-up', which can work as an effective method with which early stage entrepreneurs can minimize challenges they face. Even though lean start-up is a widely accepted concept among practitioners and recognized as a useful tool for entrepreneurship and education, but has not got deserved attention from the academic world. This paper offers basic framework and key principles of lean start-ups, furthermore, shows Korean cases of step-by-step application methods of its concepts. It also suggest key issues in adopting lean start-up strategy. This study has implications and contributions for entrepreneurs, educators and researchers through providing comprehensive perspectives on process of the lean start-up strategy.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.255-271
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• 2016

The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between tacit knowledge and creativity in early stage entrepreneurial ventures in which knowledge could be competitive asset. This study also analyze the moderating effect of social media use on the relationship of tacit knowledge and creativity. From total of 129 survey analysis, this study finds the positive relationship between tacit knowledge and creativity. The result also shows that social media has a moderating effect on the relationship between tacit knowledge and creativity with a negative path coefficient. That is, social media can reduce the positive effect of tacit knowledge on creativity. This research implies importance of tacit knowledge in early stage entrepreneurial ventures and suggests social media usage to improve creativity.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.99-116
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to suggest the integrated entrepreneurial competency models that reflect critical entrepreneurial competencies that entrepreneurs should have at different stages, thereby enhancing the success rate of ventures. To accomplish the purpose, this study developed the hypotheses about the positive effects of entrepreneurial competencies on business performance, and the moderating effect of learning competency to strengthen the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and business performance. The results of this study are as follows. First, the technological functional competency of entrepreneurial teams, the resource utilization and business planning competency of entrepreneurs in the early stage of business development were found to significantly affect both non-financial and technological performance. The opportunity recognition competency has a significantly positive effect on non-financial performance. In addition, it is analyzed that learning competency significantly moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies(technological functional, resource utilization) and non-financial performance. The moderating effect of learning competency between business planning competency and technological performance was also found to be significant. Second, leadership and resource acquisition competency of entrepreneurs in the late stage of ventures have significantly positive effects on both non-financial and technological performance. The strategic competency has a significantly positive effect on non-financial performance. It was also found that the moderating effect of learning competency between strategic competency and non-financial performance was significant. Finally, the results show that both non-financial and technical performance of NTBVs are significant determinants of financial performance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.211-226
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• 2023

As we transition into the post-COVID era, economic activities that were stagnant are regaining momentum. In particular, there is a growing trend of technology entrepreneurship driven by the opportunities of digital transformation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, entrepreneurship education content is struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change. This study aims to emphasize the importance of entrepreneurship mentoring as a crucial component of entrepreneurship education content that requires adaptation and advancement due to the increasing demand for technology entrepreneurship. This study redefines startup mentoring, which is differentiated from general mentoring, at the present time when the demand for startups, which increases with the declining employment rate, increases, and the development of quality startup education contents and securing professional startup mentors are required. According to the start-up stage, it is divided into preliminary entrepreneurs and early entrepreneurs, and the effect of entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy among start-up mentoring functions on entrepreneurial will and mentoring satisfaction is improved by empirically researching the effects of start-up mentoring functions in the case of initial entrepreneurs as a moderating effect. To confirm the importance of entrepreneurship mentoring effect for. To this end, among the mentoring functions, entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy were set as independent variables, and entrepreneurial will and mentoring satisfaction were set as dependent variables. The research model was designed and hypotheses were established. In addition, empirical analysis was conducted by conducting a questionnaire survey on trainees who received entrepreneurship mentoring education at ICCE Startup School and Opus Startup School. To summarize the results of the empirical analysis, first, among the entrepreneurship mentoring functions, entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy were analyzed to have a significant positive (+) effect on entrepreneurial will. Second, among the entrepreneurship mentoring functions, entrepreneurship knowledge and self-efficacy were analyzed to have a significant positive (+) effect on mentoring satisfaction. Third, it was analyzed that entrepreneurship had no significant moderating effect on entrepreneurial knowledge and entrepreneurial will. Fourth, it was analyzed that entrepreneurship had no significant moderating effect on mentoring satisfaction. Fifth, it was found that entrepreneurship had a significant moderating effect between self-efficacy and will to start a business. As a result of the research analysis, the first implication is that the mentoring function in start-up education is analyzed to produce meaningful results for both the initial entrepreneurs and the prospective entrepreneurs in the will to start a business and satisfaction. . Second, it was analyzed that there was no significant relationship between whether a business was started and the mentoring function and effect. However, it was analyzed that the will to start a business through improvement of self-efficacy through mentoring was significantly related to whether or not to start a business. turned out to be helpful. Many start-up education programs currently conducted in Korea educate both early-stage entrepreneurs and prospective entrepreneurs at the same time for reasons such as convenience. However, through the results of this study, even in small-scale entrepreneurship mentoring, it is suggested that customized mentoring through detailed classification such as whether the mentee has started a business can be a method for successful entrepreneurship and high satisfaction of the mentee.

• 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.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.570-579
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• 2021

Compared to men, women experience difficulties in fund-raising, which can be a fundamental impediment to the success of women entrepreneurs. In this study, we examine whether is a difference between genders in the initial funding performance of start-up companies and confirm whether there are differences in organizational factors and entrepreneur factors that affect the initial funding performance. Data were collected through a survey of technology-based start-up companies located in the metropolitan area, and 287 companies were used for hypothesis analysis. The results reveal that there was a significant difference between genders in the investment attraction performance of early-stage entrepreneurs. In addition, as a result of the split-group regression analysis, it was found that in the case of men, firm age, early firm size, starting capital, engineering major had a significant effect on men. However, in the case of the women's group, it was confirmed that all the variables related to the organizational factors and entrepreneur factors were not significant. This study indirectly suggests that prejudices such as gender role stereotypes actually affect economic activities related to investment attraction activities.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.247-254
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• 2014

This study explored how early stage entrepreneurs think about key success factors of startup and its impact factors. Previous research on key success factors of startup focused on high technology industry or explored retrospectively main reason of their startup success. However, preparatory entrepreneur who lacks career and social experience has different point of view of startup success, because of their situation which they overcome various problem of entrepreneurial process. This research surveyed key success factors and impact factors of entrepreneurial success based on 905 preparatory entrepreneur. We witnessed that preparatory entrepreneur recognizes various key success factors and found different key success factors according to the attribute of preparatory entrepreneur. We found that man, team startup and non technology related startup in 20s age emphasized procuring superior manpower. But solitary startup and previous career related busienss and long preparation term in 30s age recognized importantly about the entrepreneur's ability. Also, preparatory entrepreneur who considered importantly sales promotion and thorough preparation has different attribute. We can find a unique point that Funding capability was not significant attribute. Finally we suggested implication and further research agenda to foster young entrepreneur based on major findings.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.141-158
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• 2023

From the perspective of an entrepreneur, one of the most important factors for understanding the inherent limitations of a startup, reducing the risk of failure, and succeeding is the composition of the talent, that is, the founding team. Therefore, a common concern experienced by entrepreneurs in the pre-entrepreneurship stage or the early stage of startup is the choice between independent startups and co-founding start-up. Nonetheless, in Korea, the share of independent entrepreneurship is significantly higher than that of co-founding start-up. On the other hand, focusing on the fact that many successful global innovative companies are in the form of co-founding start-up, the success factors of co-founding start-up were examined. Most of the related preceding studies are studies that identify the capabilities and characteristics of individual entrepreneurs as factors influencing the survival and success of entrepreneurship, and there is a lack of research on partnerships, that is, co-founding start-up, which are common in the field of entrepreneurship ecosystems. Therefore, this study attempted a multi-case study through in-depth interviews, collection of relevant data, analysis of contextual information, and consideration of previous studies targeting co-founders of domestic startups that succeeded in opportunistic startups. Through this, a model for deriving the phased characteristics and key success factors of co-founding start-up was proposed. As a result of the study, the key element of the preliminary start-up stage was 'opportunity', and the success factors were 'opportunity recognition through entrepreneur's experience' and 'idea development'. The key element in the early stages of start-up is "start-up team," and the success factor is "trust and complement of start-up team," and synergy is shown when "diversity and homogeneity of start-up team" are harmonized. In addition, conflicts between co-founders may occur in the early stages of start-ups, which has a large impact on the survival of start-ups. The conflict between the start-up team could be overcome through constant "mutual understanding and respect through communication" and "clear division of work and role sharing." It was confirmed that the core element of the start-up growth stage was 'resources', and 'securing excellent talent' and 'raising external funds' were important factors for success. These results are expected to overcome the limitations of start-up companies, such as limited resources, lack of experience, and risk of failure, in entrepreneurship studies, and prospective entrepreneurs preparing for a start-up in a situation where the form of co-founding start-up is attracting attention as one of the alternatives to increase the success rate. It has implications for various stakeholders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.