• Korean small business review
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.73-88
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• 2009

This study examines the characteristics of 24 Korean hidden champions such as key success factors, core competences, strategic problems, and desirable future directions. The study categorized them into 8 types with Danny Miller's four trajectories and top manager's decision making style(rationality and passion). Danny Miller argued in his book, Icarus paradox, that outstanding firms will extend their orientations until they reach dangerous extremes and their momentum will result in common trajectories of decline. He suggested four very common success types: Craftsmen, Builders, Pioneers, Salesmen. He also suggested common trajectories of decline:Focusing(from Craftsmen to Tinkers), Venturing(from Builders to Imperialists), Inventing(from Pioneers to Escapists), Decoupling(from Salesmen to Drifts). In Korea, successful startups appear to possess three kinds of drive: Technology-drive, Vision-drive, Market-drive. Successful technology-driven firms tend to grow as craftsmen or pioneers. Successful vision-driven and market-driven ones tend to grow as builders and salesmen respectively. Korean top managers or founders seem to have two kinds of decision making style: Passion-based and Rationality-bases. Passion-based(passionate) entrepreneurs are biased towards action or proactiveness in competing and getting things done. Rationality- based ones tend to emphasis the effort devoted to scanning and analysing information to better understand a company's threats, opportunities and options. Consequently this study suggested 4*2 types of Korean hidden champions: (1) passionate craftsmen, (2) rational craftsmen, (3) passionate builders, (4) rational builders, (5) passionate pioneers, (6) rational pioneers, (7) passionate salesmen, (8) rational salesmen. These 8 type firms showed different success stories and appeared to possess different trajectories of decline. These hidden champions have acquired competitive advantage within domestic or globally niche markets in spite of the weak market power and lack of internal resources. They have maintained their sustainable competitiveness by utilizing three types of growth strategy; (1) penetrating into the global market, (2) exploring new service market, (3) occupying the domestic market. According to the types of growth strategy, these firms showed different financial outcomes and possessed different issues for maintaining their competitiveness. This study found that Korean hidden champions were facing serious challenges from the transforming economic structure these days and possessed the decline potential from their success momentum or self-complacence. It argues that they need to take a new growth engine not to decline in the turbulent environment. It also discusses how firms overcome the economic crisis and find a new business area in promising industries for the future. It summarized the recent policy of Korean government called as "Green Growth" and discussed how small firms utilize such benefits and supports from the government. Other implications for firm strategies and governmental policies were discussed.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.23-38
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• 2012

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games(MMORPGs) headed by some Korean game companies such as NC Soft, NHN, and Nexon have exploded in recent years. However, it becomes one of the major challenges for the MMORPG developers to design their games to appeal to gamers since only a few MMORPGs succeed whereas they require a huge amount of initial investment. Under this background, our study derives the major elements for designing MMORPG from the literature, and identifies the ones critical to the users' satisfaction and their willingness to pay among the derived elements. Though most previous studies on the design elements of MMORPG have used analytic hierarchy process(AHP), our study adopts artificial neural network(ANN) as the tool for identifying key success factors in designing MMORPG. The results of our study show that the elements of the game contents quality have a bigger effect on the user's satisfaction, whereas the ones of the value-added systems have a bigger effect on the user's willingness to pay. They also show that user interface affects both the user's satisfaction and willingness to pay most. These results imply that the strategies for the development of MMORPG should be aligned with its goal and market penetration strategy. They also imply that the satisfaction and revenue generation from MMORPG cannot be achieved without convenient and easy control environment. It is expected that the new findings of our study would be useful forthe developers or publishers of MMORPGs to build their own business strategies.

• Journal of architectural history
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• v.15 no.1 s.45
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• pp.7-27
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• 2006

This study aims to identify and analyze the factors that influenced the construction of London Eye which was led by private groups, including characteristics in progress, differentiated value in design, the combination of technology and design, and construction costs. The results of this study were the followings. 1) London Eye provides a new construction method for a landmark in the downtown in that the architects became the clients of the project which might have been hoarded, procuring the construction costs and completing it by themselves. 2) London Eye presents a space utilization method where undeveloped spaces in the downtown are used in three-dimensions by erecting a structure on the river with a minimum land. 3) The process of design, production and erection is propelled the realization of technical intention design with one system and from at the initial stage, the participation of the engineer where the designer is equal with you must accompany. 4) London Eye is endowed with strong shape by a circle in design concept, which is the simplest geometrical figure, and it provides organic relationship between the past and the present by utilizing historical elements in various ways. 5) The construction was completed through four phases including idea phase, promotion phase, turn-key contract phase, and design-build phase. The most critical factor to the success is derived from the direct contact with Involved companies from the production phase. 6) In a project facing many challenges in terms of technology, the design-build method proves to be a more effective method than turn-key contract in that it may more allocate risks and enable coherent implementation of the core concept in design. The organization for the design-build method was composed of three phases including general affairs, responsible contracting by sector, and cooperative system by sector. Since that was a new concept structure, high-level contractors who hadn't had existing cooperative relationships with one another formed new cooperative relationship, while collaborating companies who had long cooperated led the responsible contracting and sub-cooperative system, which resulted in reduction of risks and time. 7) The major factors to change design were the design characteristics, derived from a technically great combination, and the opening time. 8) A new erection method was applied to London Eye, a structure that overcame the limitation in land and period, and the process of installation demonstrated that it is an important value for the construction of a landmark in the city. 9) In spite of many visitors and tremendous operational income, the factors that London Eye fails to free itself from debts include the construction costs expended double than expected, and interest burden to the investments, which occurred in the course of procuring the costs. Absolute limit in time increased the construction costs, resulting in being a great obstacle in the course of operation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.105 no.3
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• pp.366-376
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• 2016

The "Forest Partnership" mechanism in Indonesia allows those with authority to manage forests, including Forest Management Units (KPH) and concession holders, to partner with local communities for forest management and profit sharing. The objective of this study is to identify the challenges that this new mechanism is facing and develop practical policy recommendations for its successful implementation. "Lombok Forest Partnership" is the first of its kind in Indonesia between Forest Management Unit (KPH) and a local community. The local community members participating in this partnership were surveyed for their expected outcomes, degree of their satisfaction about the process and profits sharing, as well as other factors affecting their participation. Respondents reported that they have obtained the information on Forest Partnership completely from KPH and NGO. Local peoples participated in Lombok Forest Partnership to improve their incomes, and recognized timber production as the most important income source with high possibility of success. However, timber production will require sizable initial capital investment for establishing nursery and other supporting activities, which cannot come from local communities lacking economic means. Thus, Forest Partnership would be difficult to succeed if KPH does not take the initiative to permit and promote local community to use special area and generate profits in their jurisdiction. KPH, in turn, can share the profits with local peoples. In this regard, KPH's leadership is the key factor in the success of Forest Partnership. However, KPH will need to cultivate their capacity to develop and implement income-generating business with local community. Although profit sharing ratio of timber and non-timber forest products among local community who participated in Lombok Forest Partnership was very high at 75%, and 90%, the level of satisfaction on profit sharing ratio was only average. The cooperative organized by the local community is also dealing with sensitive nature of allocating forest area internally among their members. Thus, keeping the principle of fairness, equity and transparency is the key for successful implementation of Forest Partnership mechanism. This first case of Forest Partnership can serve as a model for the future cases and provide the early lessons.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.13-29
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• 2023

Overcoming the death valley, a period in which resources are depleted and profitability declines or stagnates in the entrepreneurial process, is an essential procedure for success. In this study, we examined how the strategic orientation(technology, customer, competitor orientations) and absorptive capacity(potential, realized capacities) of startups affect the possibility of startups to overcome the challenges of death valley, and also empirically analyzed whether support of open innovation and venture capital has a moderating influence to the overcoming of death valley. The result of this study shows that customer orientation and realized absorptive capacity have a positive influence on overcoming the death valley. In addition, we found that the support of open innovation and venture capital has a moderating effect only in the technology orientation among the three types of strategic orientations. The result of this research emphasizes (1) the need for startups to take a more customer-oriented approach to overcome the death valley. The customer-oriented behavior and strategies of startups are vital for their longterm survival and success if we consider the fact that most of the companies investigated in this study were technology-based startups and only customer orientation showed significant results in overcoming the death valley. The research outcome also shows that (2) implementing innovation in a more open way and securing venture capital funding can make it easier for startups to overcome the death valley. This study has academic significance in that it empirically analyzed the relationship of key factors influencing the overcoming of death valley in a situation where the majority of existing research remains at the conceptual level of discussion or methodology of case study. Furthermore, this research also provides practical implications for the establishment and implementation of effective strategies to confront the challenges of death valley for startups, government and related organizations.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.284-309
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• 2007

Technology transfer (TT) consortium is an affiliation of two or more public research institutions (PRIs) that participate in a common technology transfer activity or pool their resources together, with the objective of facilitating technology transfer. Based on empirical analysis of five regional TT consortia (2002-2006) operating in Korea, this paper suggests their effectiveness by employing a TT performance index (TTPI) and identifies possible characteristics involved, such as motivations, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. TTPI devised in the paper is a new composite TT performance index to measure how much the TT performance of a PH changed in a designated year compared to a base year. All the performance indicators of TTPI are well-structured based on the unique TT process that is prevalent in Korea. Further, TTPI can bring different size and focus of PRIs to the same scale for comparison by double-normalizing. The paper tests the effectiveness of TT consortium for the escalation of TT performances in member PRIs by highlighting the differences of TTPI's between 2005 and 2001. As a result, the paper found that the escalation of TTPI for member PRIs was greater than that for non-member PRIs. As for the characteristics of TT consortia, their respective factors obtained by TT expert survey were computed with proportion tests of differences (Z tests) to compare two perspectives between intramural and extramural groups. One of key findings is that there is general homogeneity in stakeholder perspectives regarding motivations, facilitators, barriers, and challenges. Some notable responses are as follow; the most probable motivation to join TT consortium is to share or exchange TT competences for enhanced performance. Second, the most probable facilitator is professional capability of consortium-hired personnel. Third, the foremost probable barriers to effective TT consortium are frequent change of consortium director and passive participation of member PRIs. Lastly, both publicizing TT consortia and developing performance metrics are the most important for the improvement of TT consortia. The understanding of the characteristics of TT consortia increases the likelihood of accelerated success, because TT consortia path from formation to termination encompasses many concepts, processes, principles, and factors. Finally, an analysis of the survey data combined with expert interview and observation data led the authors to derive five conditions as being critical to viable TT consortia in Korea at early stage of technology transfer systems. These conditions include policy infrastructure, proactive participation, excellent professionals, personal motivation, and teaming mechanisms. It is expected that the Korean evidence is a starting point to develop and refine the theory of TT consortia and for additional studies in other countries.

• Journal of East Asia Management
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.29-49
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• 2020

In an intensively competitive global market, small-and medium-sized firms are puzzled about how to develop sustainable competitive advantages against global rivalries, thus leading satisfactory economic performance. However, despite the roles and contributions of such small-and medium-sized firms in the local community and national economies in Japan, little guidance has been offered to the practical issues related to their strategic behaviors toward global management. To fill this notable knowledge gap, this study aims to investigate the conditions in which how Japanese small-and medium-sized could dominates global market, which is one of key challenges in the literature of small business and entrepreneurship. To obtain better insights to this research area, this study undertakes an in-depth interview survey with I.S.T (Industrial Summit Technology) Corporation that shows off the highest global market share (40 per cent) with seamless polyimide tube product widely used in office automation equipment (e.g., copiers and printers). This method of survey is designed to deeply understand historical considerations about how I.S.T Corporation could dominate in the global market of such seamless polyimide tube product. Based on findings drawn from an interview, this study identifies five major factors enabling I.S.T Corporation to be a competitive global hidden company: vision sharing through founder's entrepreneurship, core competence, strategic network, risk management, and employee engagement. Specifically, to become a global hidden champion, sharing the vision motivating employees to partake in shaping company's future will be the first step on the road to global success through founder's entrepreneurship. However, in order to achieve such a vision, the importance of company's core competence cannot be overemphasized, which differentiates your customer solution with those of competitors. As such, a group of experts will be naturally formed and demonstrates your expertise in the global market, thereby building sustainable competitiveness. On the other hand, to maintain sustainable competitiveness, it is necessary to make up for the weaknesses small-and medium-sized firms suffer from competitive resources while strengthening their own strengths through strategic networks with external organizations. Here, every company has to understand the critical role of risk management, which is essential in this process of being global company so as not to lose your own strengths. Last but not least, do not forget the significant effects of employee engagement in firm performance. To enhance employees' engagement, a company has to create an ideal organization culture which fits into company's history and personality. In doing so, such organization culture can allow the vision and strategy to be implemented into detailed business tactics while facilitating employees to challenge the status quo by experimenting with creative ideas.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.44-49
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• 2023

In the global pursuit of carbon neutrality, the rapid increase in the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) has led to a corresponding surge in the demand for batteries. To achieve high efficiency in electric vehicles, considerations of weight reduction and battery safety have become crucial factors. Copper and aluminum, both recognized as lightweight materials, can be effectively joined through laser welding. However, due to the distinct physical characteristics of these two materials, the process of joining them poses technical challenges. This study focuses on conducting simulations to identify the optimal laser parameters for welding copper and aluminum, with the aim of streamlining the welding process. Additionally, a Graphic User Interface (GUI) program has been developed using the Python language to visually present the results. Using machine learning image data, this program is anticipated to predict joint success and serve as a guide for safe and efficient laser welding. It is expected to contribute to the safety and efficiency of the electric vehicle battery assembly process.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.101-120
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• 2019

The goal of this study was to apply an expectancy-value model(Wigfield & Eccles, 2000) to explain changes in six multi-ethnic students' achievement motivation in mathematics during sixth (2012) to eighth (2014) grades. In order to achieve this goal, we used narrative research methods. Although individual students' achievement motivation and mathematics related life experiences differed, there are some common factors influencing their motivation development, especially (a) roles played by parents and teachers; (b) assessment of peers' competencies; (c) past learning experiences related to mathematics curriculum; (d) perception of the relationship between mathematics competency and other subjects; (e) home backgrounds; and (f) perceived task values. In this study, we achieved some insight into why some multi-ethnic students are willing to study hard to get good scores while others are uninterested in mathematics, and why some multi-ethnic students are likely to pursue new mathematical tasks and persist despite challenges, while others easily give up studying mathematics in the face of adversity. We argue that in order to increase and sustain multi-ethnic students' achievement motivation, educators and parents should recognize that motivation is contextually formulated in the intersection of current people, time, and space, not a personal entity formed in an individual's mind. The findings of this study shed light on the development of achievement motivation and can inform efforts to develop multi-ethnic students' positive motivation, which might influence their mathematics achievement and success in school.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.127-152
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• 2017

One of the biggest challenges in export activities of SME is the increasingly cultural diversity that requires especially export managers to adapt their doing business in many different kinds of cross-cultural situations effectively. A relative newly developed concept 'Cultural Intelligence' has been evaluated as a key element for the success in international business activities. This study aims to investigate empirically the role of Cultural Intelligence(CQ), one component of cultural competence, on export marketing adaptation. The statistical method used to test the hypotheses was Structural Equation Modeling using PLS. The results of this study are follows. The moderating role of Cultural Intelligence between information seeking and information using abilities is more stronger in marketing rather than relationship adaptation. Cultural Intelligence moderates between them. Critical factors affecting Cultural Intelligence are also discussed; foreign language fluency, business travels in abroad, characteristics of the business travels, multi-lingual ability, pre-education related cultural subjects, and visit experience in foreign countries. Especially, export managers' foreign language ability leads to much stronger influence on cultural intelligence. The result of the empirical study provides important implications for export SME and export supporting organizations. Export firms and supporting organizations must expand programs widely in multi cultural training and education to help managers gain a better understanding in a various export environment.