• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.63-77
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• 2022

The importance of start-ups and venture companies in the Korean economy is growing. However, the successful growth of startups and venture companies are still challenging as 70% of startups fail within 5 years. A new perspective on innovation is essential to overcome the liability of newness and the liability of smallness in the existing market and obtain the competitive advantage. Recent phenomenon in the Korean startups ecosystem is the remarkable growth of unicorns and future unicorns. Their business models, types of business, and success cases serve as a good example. Neverthless, the process of unicorn and future unicorn startups making new industries and innovative business has poorly understood. In this paper, we first define 175 unicorns and future unicorn startups participating in the K-unicorn project as a unicorn group and analyze current trends of the group. Then the in-depth analyses of industry sectors are conducted. Specifically, focusing on the unicorn forming the new market, we examine the unicorn making the processes of industry category innovation through the business innovation model. Lastly, broadening the scope of the analysis to the unicorn group, policy implications in startups and venture ecosystem are suggested.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1-26
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• 2020

The term 'Unicorns' in the corporate ecosystem was firstly introduced by Aileen Lee in 2013. It has been actively discussed in South Korea particularly to compare the level of the 'start-up ecosystem' from a global perspective. Accordingly, the Korean government has recently set a policy goal 'to nurture 20 Korean unicorn companies by 2022'. While the phenomenon of 'Unicorn Club Company' has been brought to the level of policy objectives and spread more widely to the public, existing academic research to understand its substantial and underlying implications has been insufficient. First, in this study, the characteristics of 479 'Unicorn Club' companies in 2019 were analyzed in-depth. Previous research has focused on the general status and trend by analyzing the number of unicorn companies by country and industry classifications. However, this study conducted a qualitative exploratory analysis by investigating descriptive statistics about unicorn companies, including their investors, while providing case studies. Also, cluster analysis, ANOVA, and multi-level regression were employed for quantitative exploration. The characteristics of individual companies were examined based on the "ERIS Model (Entrepreneur - Industry(Market) - Resource - Strategy Model)". Secondly, factors influencing its valuations were examined in connection with the previously analyzed characteristic variables and investor characteristics. Finally, based on these, the future direction of the "Unicorn Phenomenon" from the perspective of "Enterprise Ecosystem" and productively using it from the perspective of the public policy is suggested.

• 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.

• 한국벤처창업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2021.04a
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• pp.33-42
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• 2021

Based on the findings of Lee et al.(2020) and Lee & Oh(2021), this paper aims to fill the gap in our knowledge regarding the relationship between strategic choices and corporate growth by utilizing a novel dataset of 'Unicorn' and 'Hyper-growing' companies. Two previous studies provide coherent findings that the relationship between firms' strategies and their performance should be explored under a more comprehensive framework with consideration of both internal and external factors. Therefore, in this study, we apply a single conceptual framework to two different datasets, which considers the strategy factors as independent variables, and the industry(market) and the firm age as moderating variables. For our dependent variables, valuations for unicorn companies and revenue CAGR for hyper-growing companies are used after categorizing them into three uniform groups. The strategy variables include 'Generic (Cost-leadership, Differentiation, focus) strategies', 'Growth(Organic, M&A) strategies', 'Leading(Pioneer, Fast-follower) strategies', 'Target market(B2B, B2C, B2G, C2C) strategies', 'Global(Global, Local) strategies', 'Digital(Online, Offline) strategies.' For industry(market) factors, it consists of historical growth rate for industries and economic, demographic, and regulatory aspects of states and countries. To overcome the differences in their units, they are also uniformly categorized into multiple groups. Before we conduct a regression analysis, we analyze the industry distribution of the 'Unicorn' and the 'Hyper-growing' companies with descriptive statistics at the integrated and individual levels. Next, we employ hierarchical regression models on Study A('Unicorn' companies in 2019) and Study B('Hyper-growing' companies in 2019) under the same comprehensive framework. We then analyze the relationship between the 'strategy' and the 'performance' factors with two different approaches: 1) an integrated regression model with both the sample of Study A and B and 2) respective regression models on Study A and B. This empirical study aims to provide a complete understanding and a reference to which strategy factors should be considered to promote firms' scale-up and growth.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2010.07a
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• pp.115-116
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• 2010

본 논문에서는 PMSM(Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor)을 이용한 재봉틀 구동시스템을 개발하였다. 전차원 관측기를 이용하여 속도를 추정하고, 벨트(Belt)에 의한 외란 토크를 추정하여 보상하였다. 개발된 재봉틀 구동시스템을 실제 재봉틀에 장착하여 그 효용성을 검증하였다.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.1-11
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• 2020

Increasing the number of unicorn startups has recently received much attention. In this study, we attempt to investigate that startups achieving an extremely high valuation could postpone their exit to raise more investment and receive more benefits. This study tested the hypotheses using data from Crunchbase, World Bank, Global Competitiveness Report, and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Using 140 unicorn startups that have already exited through an initial public offering (IPO) or mergers and acquisitions (M&A), we find out that unicorn startups tend to acquire higher valuation as their investment duration increases. Furthermore, we also examined the moderating effects of governmental policy and institutional distance from foreign investors in order to consider the institutional aspects of startups. The results of the moderating variables show significant supports. We expect to provide a better understanding with respect to making an exit decision of unicorn startups. Furthermore, managers and investors need to acknowledge the institutional factors of startups when they decide to fund.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.305-332
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• 2022

Purpose: As the public interest in entrepreneurship has been highlighted and entrepreneurship policies have been generated, this study is to construct Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (EE) models which have a significant relationship to national entrepreneurship with quantitative analysis. It aims to provide implications to EE policymakers that which national components are effective in cultivating innovative entrepreneurship and validate its EE quality based on quantitative performance goals. Methods: This study utilizes secondary data, categorized under the PESTLE factor from credible international organizations (WB, UNDP, GEM, GEDI, and OECD) to determine significant factors in the quality of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This paper uses the Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) analysis to select the significant variables contributing to entrepreneurship performance. Using the AUC-ROC performance evaluation method for machine learning MLR results, this paper evaluates the performance of EE models so that it can allow approving EE quality by predicting potential performance. Results: Among nine hypothesis models, MLR analysis examines that the number of the Unicorn company, Unicorn companies' economic value, and entrepreneurship measured as GEI can be reasonable dependent variables to indicate the performance derived from EE quality. Rather than government policies and regulations, the social, finance, technology, and economic variables are significant factors of EE quality determining its performance. By having high Area Under Curve values under AUC-ROC analysis, accepted MLR models are regarded as having high prediction accuracy. Conclusion: Superior EE contributes to the outstanding Unicorn companies, and improvement in macro-environmental components can enhance EE quality.

• KLA journal
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• v.48 no.8 s.386
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• pp.53-58
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• 2007

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.1237-1244
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• 2006

This research discussed about method for basis construction of sea jacket construction. Several access ways of method for foundation construction of sea jacket construction are used. Accompany many efforts of design and build process to overcome the form of construction work and application equipment, special quality of construction and restriction and so on of sea environment in the case of pile foundation. Therefore, great many factor of sea condition, construction special quality, base condition, construction time, equipment composition, worker composition etc. shows other work form in spot at sea jacket construction process.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.173-188
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• 2023

This paper analyzed the Earnings management of firms selected as preliminary Unicorn. If a manager is selected as a preliminary unicorn firm, he can receive financial support of up to 20 billion won, creating a factor in managing the manager's earnings. The motive for management's earnings management is related to the capital market. Accounting information is used by investors and financial analysts, and corporate profits affect corporate value. Therefore, if the accounting earning is adjusted upward, the corporate value will be raised and investment conditions will be favorable. In this paper, earnings quality was measured by the modified Jones model of Dechow et al.(1995) by the ROA control model of Kothari et al.(2005) among the discretionary accruals estimated using an alternative accrual prediction model. Competing similar companies in the same market as the selected companies were formed, and the discretionary accruals were mutually compared to verify the research hypotheses, and only the selected companies were analyzed for the audit year and after the audit year. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the companies selected as preliminary unicorns had higher earnings management compared to the corresponding companies in question, which had a negative impact on the quality of accounting profits. It was found that the companies selected as preliminary unicorns continued to receive incentives for management's earnings management even after being selected. These results indicate that the companies selected as prospective unicorns are recognized for their value in the market through external growth rather than internal growth, and thus, incentives for management's earnings management to attract investment from external investors under favorable conditions are continuing. In the future preliminary unicorn selection evaluation, it was possible to present what needs to be reviewed on the quality of accounting earning. The implication of this paper is that the factors of management's earnings management eventually hinder investors and creditors from judging the reliability of accounting information. It was suggested that a policy alternative for the K-Unicorn Project, which enhances reliability were presented by reflecting the evaluation of earnings quality through discretionary accruals.