• 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 information systems
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.125-150
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• 2009

RFID(Radio Frequency IDentification) is a wireless frequency of recognition technology that can be used to recognize, trace, and identify people, things, and animals using radio frequency(RF). RFID will bring about many changes in manufacturing and distributions, among other areas. In accordance with the increasing importance of RFID techniques, great advancement has been made in RFID studies. Initially, the RFID research started as a research literature or case study. Recently, empirical research has floated on the surface for announcement. But most of the existing researches on RFID adoption have been restricted to a dichotomous measure of 'adoption vs. non-adoption' or adoption intention. In short, RFID research is still at an initial stage, mainly focusing on the research of the RFID performance, integration, and its usage has been considered dismissive. The purpose of this study is to investigate which factors are important for the RFID adoption and implementation with organizational resources. In this study, the organizational resources are classified into either finance resources or IT knowledge resources. A research model and four hypotheses are set up to identify the relationships among these variables based on the investigations of such theories as technological innovations, adoption stage, and organizational resources. In order to conduct this study, a survey was carried out from September 27, 2008 until October 23, 2008. The questionnaire was completed by 143 managers and workers from physical distribution and manufacturing companies related to the RFID in South Korea. 37 out of 180 surveys, which turned out unfit for the study, were discarded and the remaining 143(adoption stage 89, implementation stage 54) were used for the empirical study. The statistics were analyzed using Excel 2003 and SPSS 12.0. The results of the analysis are as follows. First, the adoption stage shows that perceived benefits, standardization, perceived cost savings, environmental uncertainty, and pressures from rival firms have significant effects on the intent of the RFID adoption. Further, the implementation stage shows that perceived benefits, standardization, environmental uncertainty, pressures from rival firms, inter-organizational cooperation, and inter-organizational trust have significant effects on the extent of the RFID use. In contrast, inter-organizational cooperation and inter-organizational trust did not show much impact on the intent of RFID adoption while perceived cost savings did not significantly affect the extent of RFID use. Second, in the adoption stage, financial issues had adverse effect on both inter-organizational cooperation and the intent against the RFID adoption. IT knowledge resources also had a deterring effect on both perceived cost savings and the extent of the RFID adoption. Third, in the implementation stage, finance resources had a moderate effect on environmental uncertainty and extent of RFID use while IT knowledge resources had also a moderate effect on perceived cost savings and the extent of the RFID use. Limitations and future research issues can be summarized as follows. First, it is difficult to say that the sample is large enough to be representative of the population. Second, because the sample of this study was conducted among manufacturers only, it may be limited in analyzing fully the effect on the industry as a whole. Third, in consideration of the fact that the organizational resources in the RFID study require a great deal of researches, this research may deem insufficient to fulfill the purpose that it initially set out to achieve. Future studies using performance research are, therefore, needed to help better understand the organizational level of the RFID adoption and implementation.

• The Journal of Small Business Innovation
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to suggest an efficient way for ventures to achieve innovation performance through R&D cooperative arrangements. Achieving innovation is one of the critical factors for the survival of ventures. Unlike established firms, ventures often do not have the specialized assets necessary to take technological developments to the product and market stages. Young and resource-constrained firms can achieve innovation by finding and accessing to the complementary resources from R&D cooperation. In the current business environment, many firms are likely to engage in multiple simultaneous R&D cooperations with different partners. Recent research stream addresses the importance of efficient cooperation management from the holistic portfolio perspective. Since maintaining the multiple cooperative relations require substantial amount of time and effort, managing cooperative relationships play a more important role to resource-constrained firms. In order to find an efficient composition of R&D cooperative partners, we mainly focus on the diversity of partner type and dependence level in partnership. We analyze the data on Korean manufacturing ventures collected in the Korean Innovation Survey (KIS) which was conducted by the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI). The KIS questionnaire assesses the existence of cooperative relationships with different types of partners respectively. The types of cooperating partners are affiliated companies, suppliers, clients & customers, competitors or other firms in the same industry, consulting firms, universities, and research institutes. We confirm that ventures obtain relatively higher benefits from R&D cooperation compared with established firms in terms of innovation performance. The results show that a moderate level of diversity in cooperative partner type composition increases innovation. Moreover, diversity of cooperation dependency among the partners enhances innovation performance. Likewise, concentrating on the quality aspects of cooperative composition, such as diversity of partners and degree of dependencies, this study offers some implications for ventures in managing partners from an integrative perspective.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.105-119
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• 2021

The innovation cluster is formed by cooperation and networking among a number of actors, including companies, universities, research institutes, government and other supporting organizations, but the main subject of innovation in the venture ecosystem, which can be said to be the core of the innovation cluster, is the enterprise. Therefore, enterprises in innovation cluster can be seen as a major user of the innovation cluster policy. In order for the policy to be executed smoothly, policy acceptance is important. However, existing research on policy prioritization tends to be centered on policy providers, so it is necessary to check them from the perspective of policy users. Accordingly, this study conducted discussions from a two-way perspective to establish the correct policy direction through a balanced perspective between a policy provider-centered top-down perspective and a policy user's bottom-up perspective. First, the factors for activating the innovation cluster (three factors in the first level and 14 factors in the second level) were derived through prior research and expert interviews. After that, the importance of the factors for activating the innovation cluster was analyzed using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) for the policy provider group and the user group in the Daedeok Innopolis, a representative case of innovation cluster policy. As a result of analyzing the importance of the innovation cluster activation factors from the perspectives of policy providers and users, some similarities were also seen, but overall differences in mutual perception were found. It was found that the policy provider group focused on innovation creation factors, while the policy user group viewed innovation creation, clusters, and industrial location factors from a more balanced perspective. This study is meaningful in that it deals with both perspectives in a balanced way by expanding the targets from the existing policy provider-centered research to policy users. In addition, practical contributions exist in the aspect of providing basic data so that policies can be carried out based on corporate needs in fostering innovation clusters.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.185-203
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• 2009

Yuhan Kimberly, a joint-venture company of Korean Yuhan Company and American Kimberly-Clark, opened a premium diaper market in Korea by launching Pull-Ups which was pants-typed diapers in 1993. Pull-Ups was imported as finished goods from Kimberly-Clark. However, in spite of its huge market share in United States, it failed to land down in Korean market because of wrong positioning strategy which did not consider domestic customers' tastes. In 1996, Yuhan-Kimberly brought out a pants-typed diaper, Huggies-Toddler, to Korean market again. This paved the way for the combination of Kimberly-Clark's production power and Yuhan-Kimberly's marketing power and led to launch new product superior to Pull-Ups. However, this product was unsuccessful in the market because of wrong positioning which did not catch domestic customer's life styles such as cultural, environmental and habitual differences in toilet training, the cost increase coming from IMF crisis in Korea, weak trust within the company, weak trust within the company, and too much higher price than regular diapers. In 2005, Yuhan-Kimberly redeveloped new pants market business strategy. It was organically combined with winning product development plan, winning communication strategy and the market structure change through the pants market creation. Customer's habit, usage and attitude were studied with total 55 times market investigations. Also, all processes from planning to designing were executed in the customer's view by investigating product research, positioning research and advertisement research. Yuhan-Kimberly repositioned new product as a wearing diaper not as a toilet training diaper and launched Huggies Magic Panty as a premium product which had 25% higher price than previous Huggies. Huggies Magic Panty was recognized as a great hit product in domestic diaper market and the sales recorded 37.6 bill won in 2006, 57.2 bill won in 2007, and 90 bill won in 2008 since launching in 2005. The reason of Huggies Magic Panty's success was the repositioning strategy deduced from the precise check of customer's usage habit. It was the winning strategy of Huggies that were market investigation in order to survive in domestic baby goods market where a lot of companies struggled intensively, the exact positioning based on its market investigation and aggressive 360 degree communication strategy to give customers impressions efficiently.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.65-76
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• 2023

In the field of technology entrepreneurship and startups, the development of Artificial Intelligence(AI) has emerged as a key topic for business model innovation. As a result, venture firms are making various efforts centered on AI to secure competitiveness(Kim & Geum, 2023). The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between the development of GenAI technology and the startup ecosystem by analyzing domestic news articles to identify trends in the technology startup field. Using BIG Kinds, this study examined the changes in GenAI-related news articles, major issues, and trends in Korean news articles from 1990 to August 10, 2023, focusing on the emergence of ChatGPT before and after, and visualized the relevance through network analysis and keyword visualization. The results of the study showed that the mention of GenAI gradually increased in the articles from 2017 to 2023. In particular, OpenAI's ChatGPT service based on GPT-3.5 was highlighted as a major issue, indicating the popularization of language model-based GenAI technologies such as OpenAI's DALL-E, Google's MusicLM, and VoyagerX's Vrew. This proves the usefulness of GenAI in various fields, and since the launch of ChatGPT, Korean companies have been actively developing Korean language models. Startups such as Ritten Technologies are also utilizing GenAI to expand their scope in the technology startup field. This study confirms the connection between GenAI technology and startup entrepreneurship activities, which suggests that it can support the construction of innovative business strategies, and is expected to continue to shape the development of GenAI technology and the growth of the startup ecosystem. Further research is needed to explore international trends, the utilization of various analysis methods, and the possibility of applying GenAI in the real world. These efforts are expected to contribute to the development of GenAI technology and the growth of the startup ecosystem.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.151-168
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• 2022

Nowadays companies are required to achieve social goals beyond maximizing shareholder profits. Accordingly, it is important to pursue both the economic and social goals of a company at the same time. Thus the importance of hybrid organizations is increasing theoretically and practically. In particular, since hybrid organizations essentially have the complexity of pursuing both economic and social purposes, the institutional demands of various stakeholders surrounding hybrid organizations are also conflicting. Several previous studies have considered how hybrid organizations respond to these conflicting institutional demands, but most studies are limited to studying at a specific point in time. As a result, there was a limit to analyzing the dynamics in response to conflicting institutional demands as the hybrid organization expanded its business. This study predicted that the hybrid organization would take selective coupling with conflicting institutional demands and that the process of responding to institutional demands would change according to the organization's growth. In this study, we had a case study about Noul and Enuma, social ventures that operate relatively advanced business models with outstanding results in innovation and technology. As a result, social ventures show a selective coupling for conflicting institutional demands, and the selective coupling process changes as their business model are advanced. Specifically, in the early stages of the business, it appears to respond to economic and social demands at the same time with a single business model. When the business is advanced, two or more business models are operated, some of which respond to economic needs and some of which respond to social needs. In the early stages of business, social ventures respond to economic and social demands with a single business model to gain legitimacy and survive in the institutional demands. But when they enter the business growth period, they try to separate business models which respond to economic and social values because they pursue sustainable growth and challenge large-scale missions. Overall, this study attempted to contribute to an in-depth understanding of hybrid organizations by identifying that the method of responding to conflicting institutional demands varies depending on the growth process of social ventures.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.1-19
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• 2017

Original scripts of e-learning lectures for the CEOs of corporation S were analyzed using topic analysis, which is a text mining method. Twenty-two topics were extracted based on the keywords chosen from five-year records that ranged from 2011 to 2015. Research analysis was then conducted on various issues. Promising topics were selected through evaluation and element analysis of the members of each topic. In management and economics, members demonstrated high satisfaction and interest toward topics in marketing strategy, human resource management, and communication. Philosophy, history of war, and history demonstrated high interest and satisfaction in the field of humanities, whereas mind health showed high interest and satisfaction in the field of in lifestyle. Studies were also conducted to identify topics on the proportion of content, but these studies failed to increase member satisfaction. In the field of IT, educational content responds sensitively to change of the times, but it may not increase the interest and satisfaction of members. The present study found that content production for CEOs should draw out deep implications for value innovation through technology application instead of simply ending the technical aspect of information delivery. Previous studies classified contents superficially based on the name of content program when analyzing the status of content operation. However, text mining can derive deep content and subject classification based on the contents of unstructured data script. This approach can examine current shortages and necessary fields if the service contents of the themes are displayed by year. This study was based on data obtained from influential e-learning companies in Korea. Obtaining practical results was difficult because data were not acquired from portal sites or social networking service. The content of e-learning trends of CEOs were analyzed. Data analysis was also conducted on the intellectual interests of CEOs in each field.

• Korean small business review
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.65-87
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• 2010

With the advent of knowledge-based society, the revitalization of technological innovation type SMEs, termed "inno-biz" hereafter, has been globally recognized as a government policymakers' primary concern in strengthening national competitiveness, and much effort is being put into establishing polices of boosting the start-ups and innovation capability of SMEs. Especially, in that the inno-biz enables national economy to get vitalized by widening world markets with its superior technology, and thus, taking the initiative of extremely competitive world markets, its growth and development has greater significance. In the case of Korea, the government has been maintaining the policies since the late 1990s of stimulating the growth of SMEs as well as building various infrastructures to foster the start-ups of the SMEs such as venture businesses with high technology. In addition, since the enactment of "Innovation Promotion Law for SMEs" in 2001, the government has been accelerating the policies of prioritizing the growth and development of inno-biz. So, for the sound growth and development of Korean inno-biz, this paper intends to offer effective management strategies for SMEs and suggest proper policies for the government, by researching into the effect of technological innovation capability and technology commercialization capability as the primary business resources on business performance in Korean SMEs in the light of market information orientation. The research is carried out on Korean companies characterized as inno-biz. On the basis of OSLO manual and prior studies, the research categorizes their status. R&D capability, technology accumulation capability and technological innovation system are categorized into technological innovation capability; product development capability, manufacturing capability and marketing capability into technology commercialization capability; and increase in product competitiveness and merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. Then the effect of each component on business performance is substantially analyzed. In addition, the mediation effect of technological innovation and technology commercialization capability on business performance is observed by the use of the market information orientation as a parameter. The following hypotheses are proposed. H1 : Technology innovation capability will positively influence business performance. H1-1 : R&D capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H1-2 : R&D capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H1-3 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H1-4 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H1-5 : Technological innovation system will positively influence product competitiveness. H1-6 : Technological innovation system will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H2 : Technology commercializing capability will positively influence business performance. H2-1 : Product development capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H2-2 : Product development capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H2-3 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H2-4 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H2-5 : Marketing capability will positively influence product competitiveness. H2-6 : Marketing capability will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H3 : Technology innovation capability will positively influence market information orientation. H3-1 : R&D capability will positively influence information generation. H3-2 : R&D capability will positively influence information diffusion. H3-3 : R&D capability will positively influence information response. H3-4 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence information generation. H3-5 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence information diffusion. H3-6 : Technology accumulation capability will positively influence information response. H3-7 : Technological innovation system will positively influence information generation. H3-8 : Technological innovation system will positively influence information diffusion. H3-9 : Technological innovation system will positively influence information response. H4 : Technology commercialization capability will positively influence market information orientation. H4-1 : Product development capability will positively influence information generation. H4-2 : Product development capability will positively influence information diffusion. H4-3 : Product development capability will positively influence information response. H4-4 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence information generation. H4-5 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence information diffusion. H4-6 : Manufacturing capability will positively influence information response. H4-7 : Marketing capability will positively influence information generation. H4-8 : Marketing capability will positively influence information diffusion. H4-9 : Marketing capability will positively influence information response. H5 : Market information orientation will positively influence business performance. H5-1 : Information generation will positively influence product competitiveness. H5-2 : Information generation will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H5-3 : Information diffusion will positively influence product competitiveness. H5-4 : Information diffusion will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H5-5 : Information response will positively influence product competitiveness. H5-6 : Information response will positively influence merits for new technology and/or product development into business performance. H6 : Market information orientation will mediate the relationship between technology innovation capability and business performance. H7 : Market information orientation will mediate the relationship between technology commercializing capability and business performance. The followings are the research results : First, as for the effect of technological innovation on business performance, the technology accumulation capability and technological innovating system have a positive effect on increase in product competitiveness and merits for new technology and/or product development, while R&D capability has little effect on business performance. Second, as for the effect of technology commercialization capability on business performance, the effect of manufacturing capability is relatively greater than that of merits for new technology and/or product development. Third, the mediation effect of market information orientation is identified to exist partially in information generation, information diffusion and information response. Judging from these results, the following analysis can be made : On Increase in product competitiveness, directly related to successful technology commercialization of technology, management capability including technological innovation system, manufacturing capability and marketing capability has a relatively strong effect. On merits for new technology and/or product development, on the other hand, capability in technological aspect including R&D capability, technology accumulation capability and product development capability has relatively strong effect. Besides, in the cast of market information orientation, the level of information diffusion within an organization plays and important role in new technology and/or product development. Also, for commercial success like increase in product competitiveness, the level of information response is primarily required. Accordingly, the following policies are suggested : First, as the effect of technological innovation capability and technology commercialization capability on business performance differs among SMEs; in order for SMEs to secure competitiveness, the government has to establish microscopic policies for SMEs which meet their needs and characteristics. Especially, the SMEs lacking in capital and labor are required to map out management strategies of focusing their resources primarily on their strengths. And the government needs to set up policies for SMEs, not from its macro-scaled standpoint, but from the selective and concentrative one that meets the needs and characteristics of respective SMEs. Second, systematic infrastructures are urgently required which lead technological success to commercial success. Namely, as technological merits at respective SME levels do not always guarantee commercial success, the government should make and effort to build systematic infrastructures including encouragement of M&A or technology trade, systematic support for protecting intellectual property, furtherance of business incubating and industrial clusters for strengthening academic-industrial network, and revitalization of technology financing, in order to make successful commercialization from technological success. Finally, the effort to innovate technology, R&D, for example, is essential to future national competitiveness, but its result is often prolonged. So the government needs continuous concern and funding for basic science, in order to maximize technological innovation capability. Indeed the government needs to examine continuously whether technological innovation capability or technological success leads satisfactorily to commercial success in market economic system. It is because, when the transition fails, it should be left to the government.