• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.29-43
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• 2016

The Lean Startup, a methodology for minimizing failure rate of startups, has been receiving attention since its publication in 2011. Although it has been receiving enormous attention as an effective methodology of startups' growth and the emergence of unicorn companies, it is undeniable that the theoretical research and cases on this topic have not been fully accumulated in Korea. Progress of management theory has been made when combining the theory and case studies. In this paper, we thus excavated the 'Cardoc' case, which has applied the lean startup concept to the entire process of service and customer development from the inception of its product design. The following are the findings of the case. First, for the successful application of lean startup, it is essential that all team members to understand the lean startup concept and are willing to apply it thoroughly to the business management. Second, the prompt launching of MVP(Minimum Viable Product) is more important than table discussion. Third, it is crucial to select the appropriate key metrics and analytic tools for effective learning. Fourth, startup must scale up promptly as soon as it verifies the product-market fit through the BML(Build-Measure-Learn) iteration cycle. Fifth, all new business expansion should be lean. Cardoc is currently testing new MVPs in order to move onto the next scale-up process with huge investments in newly added segments. This study is meaningful in that it elaborates the representative case of a Korean startup that has applied the lean startup strategy under the circumstance of insufficient discussion of Korean startup cases in comparison with growing attention both in concept development and case accumulation abroad. We hope that this paper can be a stepping stone for future relevant research on the implementation of lean startup methodology in Korea.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.95-111
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• 2015

This purpose of this study is to academically define what "luxury products" mean, and to clarify the cognitive structural relationship between product attributes and "luxuriousness" in relation to the determinant of luxuriousness that eventually affects the purchase intention of consumers. This study is also written under the theory that luxuriousness leads to benefits such as functional benefit, experiential benefit, symbolic benefit, and exclusive benefit; which all provide core values to consumers and serve as effect factors that influence the psychological satisfaction of consumers. The commonly discussed measure of the determinant of luxuriousness has often failed to adequately describe the reasons to why the consumers prefer luxury products. This study also aims to suggest a new path in how and what the consumers perceive as luxury products, and to conceptualize what luxuriousness means in the marketing perspectives on the background of a previous theory. The part of product attributes are divided in the following sections: the quality and design of functional cues and brands of symbolic cues, as well as prices. The part of the determinant of luxuriousness is divided in sections of superiority, scarcity, differentiation, and traditionality. Therefore, this study used the theoretical concept used in such common measures as well as 282 examples to empirically analyze the relationship between product attributes and luxuriousness of luxury products, and how such affect the purchase intentions of consumers. The survey used to aid this study targeted luxury product consumers regarding "B" brand of automobiles. Using the analysis through a structural equation model, the study draws a conclusion that in a relationship between product attributes and luxuriousness, quality(which is one of the functional cues) affects the facts of superiority, differentiation in a significant way, and design affects the factors of scarcity in a significant way. And brand(one of the symbolic cues) significantly affects the factors of traditionality within the luxuriousness factors, and price appeared to affect superiority and scarcity. Additionally, the brand of product attributes significantly affects purchase intention, and superiority and scarcity of luxuriousness affects purchase intention in a significant way. The structural concept of luxury and luxuriousness suggested in the study will provide the theoretical basis for building a new case study, and the determinants of luxuriousness in the marketing perspective will be a practical help for checking the consumers' psychological reasons for purchase.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.25-58
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• 2021

This study investigated the corporate growth with more emphasis on longitudinal characteristics, not the results of companies with relatively more emphasis on cross-sectional, in the 21st-century entrepreneurial context. As of the end of 2019, sampled 479 global unicorn companies, and 333 high-growth companies with revenue of more than $100 million among 5,000 private companies in the U.S. with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) exceeding 15% for the past three years. They were examined with 3 perspectives in terms of corporate growth that 1) the growth of enterprise value, 2) the pace of growth, and 3) the effectiveness of growth. As a result of our study, the corporate growth of the perspective of creating enterprise value had a relatively higher relationship with the characteristics of industries and markets. The pace of growth was more fully explained by the characteristics of the industry and the market environment and the choice of strategies that make up a valid combination. In addition, growth in terms of the effectiveness of corporate performance was influenced by the choice of strategy, the characteristics of the industry and market environment, and its business age, the proxy variable of resource accumulation, comprehensively. This study through a sample based on companies with an enterprise value of more than $1 billion and annual revenue of more than $100 million can be a valid reference in terms of creating milestones and roadmaps for scale-up of early-stage startups, particularly in terms of practitioners' point of view. It also provides a critical reference for overcoming the limitations of mainstream theories of the 20th century and developing the theory of corporate growth that fits the 21st-century entrepreneurial context.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.113-132
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• 2019

The degree of females' participation in corporate activity has been recently increased over the world and females' participation in economic activity may be new dynamic fuel for the Korean economy that falls into the vicious cycle of low growth. Start-up, therefore, has increasingly taken attention as an opportunity for females whose careers were interrupted to re-enter the labor market. The need for studies that examine factors influencing the decision of start-up is also increased along with the increase of the ratio of females' start-up. This study aims to verify effects of the women's characteristics(women discrimination, women's role conflict) and the human networks of females whose careers were interrupted, with the intention for entrepreneurial intention, which are mediated by personal attitudes and subjective norm suggested by Ajzen's Theory of Reasoned Action, based on an empirical research. The findings show that the human networks of females have an effect on attitudes toward start-up activity and subjective norm and the woman discrimination influence the personal attitudes. In contrast, the women's role conflict have no effect on both personal attitude toward start-up activity and subjective norm. This can be supposed as an outcome resulted from the subjects' low level of conflict caused by their sex roles, on their age distribution. The relation between subjective norm and entrepreneurial Intention seemed to be moderated by their perceived strong entrepreneurial supporting policy. Their attitudes toward start-up activity were found to have a mediating effect on the relation between the women discrimination, human networks and entrepreneurial Intention, while the subjective norm only mediated the relation between human networks and entrepreneurial Intention. Based on such results, this study attempts to suggest theoretical suggestions and the direction of various entrepreneurial supporting policy for the increase and the growth of start-up of females whose careers were interrupted, in Korea.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.151-163
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• 2019

In recent years, as the population of ear and aged villages has increased, the problem of conflict between rural residents and urban-to-rural migrants has been widespread. For successful rural community, such conflict resolution is more important than anything else. However, if we look at previous studies. It is true that there are many studies that focus on people who are not rural residents or urban-to-rural migrants. This study was conducted to find out the difference of strategies for conflict resolution between rural residents and urban-to-rural migrants. This study derives the factors of conflict based on the contents of previous studies, To see the difference, five strategies were used from the response strategies that were used in the 'Computer Prisoner's Dilemma Contest' held by Axelrod (2009). I would like to know what kind of strategies of rural residents and urban-to-rural migrants. All analyzes were done using SPSS 22.0 for Windows, and the results of each conflict resolution analysis showed that the indigenous conflicts were low All. Among the causes of conflict, the highest level of conflict was caused by the 'rural residents who did not understand urban culture'. The strategy is the most used, followed by tit for tat Strategy, and all-c strategy, in that order. However, It is not uncommon for employers to use a work-type strategy, and it can be seen that the strategy changes depending on the cause. As can be seen from the above results, The conflict resolution strategies are almost similar strategies. It can be seen that conflict resolution strategy is used differently according to personality. The purpose of this study is to investigate the differences in conflicts in the rural areas. In particular, it is meaningful to examine the choice of solution strategies based on game theory through reviewing prior research and eliciting actual conflict factors in the field. Successful rural settlement can be achieved not through stakeholder competition but through mutual cooperation by gaining cooperation to the other side. Mutual cooperation is more profitable than betrayal in various conflict situations. The secret to maintaining and communicating smoothly is not to use the other person to fill his or her selfish interests, but to reject it for profit, but to draw cooperation from the other party.

• 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.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.69-84
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• 2021

As industrial structural changes in the 4th Industrial Revolution have recently led to the need for fostering high-tech industries and high-tech manufacturing industries have been showing high value-added creation, the importance of high-tech manufacturing ventures has increased a lot as well. As a result of this, the government is actively supporting and fostering them. However, it appears that high-tech manufacturing ventures seem to have a lot of difficulty in securing competitive advantages due to the lack of internal core competencies and experience in the rapidly changing international economic conditions. In order for high-tech manufacturing ventures to strengthen internal core competencies, external collaborations with other companies or institutions which have diverse experience, technology skills and abundant resources are actively promoted. Accordingly, based on resource-based theory and transaction cost theory, the authors analyzed the effects of the high-tech manufacturing ventures'external collaborations on internal core competencies and management performance in this study. In order to verify the hypothesis of this study, the 2020 data on"The Research on the Precision Status of Ventures'compiled by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups since 1999 were utilized. According to the results of this study, the experience of external collaborations had a positive impact on the internal core competencies and non-financial management performance, while there was no direct impact on financial management performance. Moreover, the relationship between the experience of external collaborations and management performance is mediated by the internal core competencies. Additionally, it was found that the internal core competencies positively affected both non-financial and financial management performances, and non-financial management performance again had a significant impact on the financial management performance. Finally, the experience of external collaborations had a positive impact on both development, manufacturing, and marketing factors forming the internal core competencies. However, the impacts of individual factors were different in the management performance. Development and marketing factors were shown to have a significant impact on both non-financial and financial management performance, while the manufacturing factor had a significant impact only on financial management performance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.85-105
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• 2021

In this study, a case study was conducted on Advanced Nano Products Co.,Ltd, a company that was established in 2000 and has the core technology to produce and commercialize nano materials and ultrafine nano powders based on nano technology. Deviating from the general case study, a case study analysis frame was set based on the theory of technology management and industry-university cooperation theory, and cases were analyzed. In this case study, Advanced Nano Products Co.,Ltd. was analyzed from two analytical perspectives: the establishment of a Management Of Technology system within the company and the Industry-Academic Cooperation activity. Based on this theoretical-based analysis framework, company visit interviews and related data research and analysis were conducted. As a result of the study of the case company, it was possible to derive how the technology management and industry-university cooperation affect the growth stage of the company as follows. First, the strategic use of technology management is an important factor in strengthening the competitive advantage and core competencies of venture companies, and for survival and growth of startups in the early stages. Second, strategic use of technology management and patents and establishment of a patent management system are a part of business strategy and play a pivotal role in corporate performance. Third, the human and material infrastructure of universities affects the growth of companies in the early stage of start-up, and the high utilization of industry-university cooperation promotes the growth of companies. Fourth, continuous industry-academic cooperation activities in the growth and maturity stages of a company's growth stage are the basis for activating external exchanges and building networks. Lastly, technology management and industry-university cooperation were found to be growth factors for each growth stage of a company. In order for a company to develop continuously from the start-up to the growth and maturity stages, it is necessary to establish a technology management system from the beginning and promote strategic technology management activities. In addition, it can be said that it is important to carry out various industry-academic cooperation activities outside the company. As a result of the case analysis, it was found that Advanced Nano Products Co.,Ltd, which performed these two major activities well, overcame the crisis step by step and continued to grow until now. This study shows how the use of technology management and industry-academic cooperation creates value in each growth stage of technology-based venture companies. In addition, its active use will play a big role in the growth of other venture companies. The results of this case study can be a valid reference for growth research of technology start-up venture companies and related field application and utilization.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1-16
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• 2023

Due to imbalances in supply and demand within the labor market, start-ups have emerged as crucial players in the generation of high-quality employment opportunities, particularly in stagnant job markets. In response to this trend, governments are allocating substantial financial and human resources to initiatives that support start-up development. This has led to an increasing rate of engagement in start-up ventures across diverse age groups, not limited to younger individuals. Start-ups are enterprises focused on the commercialization of innovative ideas with the aim of achieving profitability in the marketplace. Research concerning the successful market integration of new products and the attainment of sustainable growth is pivotal. Such research is instrumental not only for the success of start-ups but also for realizing the broader social functions and contributions that these enterprises can offer. Previous research has often examined new product market-entry strategies, often referred to as new product marketing, particularly for large companies and SMEs. However, there is a gap in studies focusing on prototype marketing strategies specific to start-ups. Thus, this study aims to examine the impact of Pre-announcing marketing strategies on the market attention garnered by start-ups with low recognition and limited infrastructure, and how such attention contributes to their sustainable growth. Specifically, the study aims to uncover the causal relationship between information attributes like relevance, vividness, and novelty in building customer relationships, and their impact on purchase intentions influenced by performance expectations and hedonic motivations. In terms of Pre-announcing information attributes, relevance, vividness, and novelty positively influence performance expectations and hedonic motivations as outlined in the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2). These factors, in turn, positively impact the purchase intention for pre-announced new products from start-ups. These findings are expected to provide both theory and practical insights into the factors influencing market entry through the use of Pre-announcing marketing strategies for start-up new products.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.61-102
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• 2007

This study empirically analyzed how human resource management(HRM) practices affect the performance of venture firms using The results of the study are as follows: First of all, several HRM practices were found to affect organizational performance significantly. Specifically, ${(1)}$ recruitment and selection practices were negatively related to turnover, which seemed to mean that effective staffing including development of good recruitment pools and rigorous selection process lower turnover, and ${(2)}$ training and development, compensation, and labor-management relations were positively related to subjective performance of the firms, which implied that as the venture firms provide more opportunities of training and development to employees, provide compensation on the basis of performance, and develop cooperative labor-management relations, the subjective performance of the venture firms Increases. Secondly, negative interaction effects were found to exist between competitive strategies and HRM practices on organizational performance. Specifically, ${(1)}$ the interaction between differentiation strategy and compensation were significantly related to turnover, ${(2)}$ HRM planning and training and development interacted with differentiation strategy to significantly affect subjective organizational performance, and ${(3)}$ HRM planning, selection, training and development, compensation and communication practices interacted with technology innovation strategy to affect subjective organizational performance. So far, there have not been many studies which deal with HRM practices of venture firms in Korea. Thus, it is hoped that this study stimulate more research efforts on theory development and empirical studies on HRM practices of venture firms. Also, it is hoped that government conduct more policy studies and provide more resources in HRM area of the venture firms. Specifically, it is suggested that government take proactive steps to improve industrial skilled staff and technical researcher systems in order to alleviate the problems of workforce shortages in venture firms. And it IS also suggested that regional human resource development programs be introduced with the participation of the firms, local governments, and universities.