• Proceedings of the Korea Technology Innovation Society Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.46-59
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• 2005

After the IMF jurisdiction period, the Korean economy experienced a venture boom. Korean venture enterprises had been recognized that high profitable and high technology capacity based. These ventures also have contributed to national added value tolerably. In particular, Korean information technology (IT) venture companies got away the order of economy concentrated big companies, which were taken the opportunity of new economy to make suggestion of the future courses and to open an e-Korea era. However, IT ventures firms or dotcom enterprises have had difficulties through sinking down their bubbles and slumping technology sector from the first half of the 2000. In consideration of Korea IT venture companies' conditions, Korean government introduce new national vision in order to go ahead of intelligence based society form knowledge based. Korea is planning new investment to meet with the challenge of globalization proactively by national band named u-Korea. As following a step in IT infrastructure, it will give Korean IT ventures new demand creative technologies and services by new technological windows of opportunity. This situation is expected that will become an economic take-off. This paper will look for the way to stimulate Korean IT ventures' competence and present new frontier of IT ventures turnaround.

• Proceedings of the Technology Innovation Conference
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• 2004.02a
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• pp.288-315
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• 2004

This paper has examined the leapfrogging thesis with the case of catch-up in digital TV by the Korean firms. Despite the disadvantages implied by the technological regime of digital TV and the risks facing early entrants in trajectory choice and initial market formation, the Korean firms had achieved a 'path-creating catch-up' in the sense they chose a different path from the Japanese forerunning firms. As they have been closely watching the technological trends and the standard setting process, there was less risk of choosing the right or wrong technological trajectory. Also, despite the lack of sufficient capability and core knowledge base, the Korean firms had some complementary asset, such as the experience of producing analogue TV, and were able to develop the prototype digital TV and the ASIC chips, given the accesses to the foreign knowledge via overseas R&D posts and acquisition of a foreign company. To secure the initial market size, the Korean targeted the US market from the beginning, and their sources for competitive advantages were the speedy setting up the production system for mass production of products at the initial stage. The initial failure of the Japanese firms and the success of the Korean firms do suggest that the period of paradigm shift, like this toward digital technology, can serve as a window of opportunity for late-comers while penalizing the forerunner.