• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.1-14
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• 2021

Innovation and Scale-up of Start-up companies are becoming important national tasks. In the past, it was spread the start-up policy paradigm such as 'Start-up America', 'Start-up Chile', 'Start-up Britain' to overcome the recession globally. However as the economic recovery has become more visible recently in advanced economies, it is shifting from a start-up support policy to a scale-up oriented policy paradigm such as 'Scale-up America', Scale-up UK', 'Scale-up Denmark'. It is necessary to enter the scale-up phase beyond the start-up phase to increase the number of high-quality jobs and to continue economic growth. Therefore, it is necessary to grow the start-up into a strong medium-sized company and to lay the foundation for survival. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to consider the antecedent factors that influence the scale-up aspiration for the start-up firm to grow into a scale-up company, and empirically identifies the differences between the stages of economic development and entrepreneurs in the country. In order to accomplish the purpose, this study predicted scale-up by aspiration which is a predictor of scale-up behavior because it is difficult to achieve visible growth in a short period of time due to the characteristics of start-up companies. In order to empirically explore these relationships, the data were collected from nascent entrepreneurs who have less than 3.5 years of the Adult Population Survey(APS) among the subjects surveyed by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor(GEM) and the national economic development stage are divided into Innovation-driven, Efficiency-driven, Factor-driven type economies. For the test hypotheses, this study adopted the multi-level model analysis for comparison between national economic development stages and using the R 3.5.0 program. The results of this study are as follows. There is difference between the national economic development and the entrepreneur in the relationship between innovation orientation of entrepreneurs and scale-up aspirations. As the economy of the country develops, the innovation activity of the entrepreneur becomes more active. Since start-ups are heavily influenced by entrepreneurs, there is a difference in the degree of aspiration depending on how innovative an entrepreneur is in the same environment. In terms of the relationship between innovation orientation and scale-up aspiration, the fear of failure was found to differ between national economic development and entrepreneurs. The fear of failure differ from country to country, and this is one of the important factors affecting entrepreneurial activities. It is expected that the factors influencing the growth of the start-up companies which are identified through the results of these studies, will be used to create a suitable scale-up ecosystem according to the national economic development stage.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.95-108
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• 2021

Technology innovation activities are very important for companies to secure technological competitiveness and continue to grow. Korea operates a certification system at the national level to promote corporate innovation activities, and strives to enhance SMEs' global technological competitiveness. Among these, the representative system related to technological innovation is the New Excellent Technology (NET) certification. NET is certified through a strict three-stage screening process, and is operated for the purpose of commercialization of new technology, technology trading, and promotion of early market entry by companies. Acquiring NET certification means that the company has a certain level of technological competitiveness. Therefore, this study attempted to conduct an empirical analysis on which technology innovation activities of companies affect the success of R&D projects and improvement of management performance, centering on NET certification system. To verify this, technology strategy, technology planning, systematic R&D process, internal cooperation, and external cooperation activities were set as major variables. As a result of the empirical analysis, it was confirmed that all variables set in this study individually contributed to the success of the R&D project and improvement of management performance. However, when looking at a comprehensive level that considers all variables, it was analyzed that systematic R&D process management and cooperation activities with external organizations have a statistically significant effect on R&D project success, and technology strategy establishment and technology planning activities, which are the initial stages of R&D, have a statistically significant effect on management performance. This study was conducted on innovation-oriented SMEs that have established and operated corporate R&D centers and are actively conducting R&D activities, and multiple regression analysis was used as an analysis method.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.145-155
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• 2020

In this study, the purpose of the study is to derive the relationship between factors affecting the establishment of start-up companies, technical innovation performance, and technology commercialization, and to confirm the effects of start-up factors and technology commercialization on the technological innovation performance based on the analysis. For this research, a survey was conducted on employees aged 20 or older who were employed in large national enterprises or medium and small-sized enterprises, etc. and the results of the empirical analysis were as follows. Firstly, the factors influencing start-ups were found to have a significant impact on the technology commercialization(manufacturing capacity, producing capacity). Secondly, technology commercialization had a significant impact on the technological innovation performance(business performance, customer performance), and thirdly, technology commercialization had a partial mediating effect in the relationship between start-up factors and technical performance. This study confirmed that the factors of start-up, technology commercialization, and technological innovation performance have statistically significant impact relations, and further research on start-up factors and technology commercialization is necessary for the technological innovation and creation of companies.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.93-105
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• 2024

Car-sharing is a representative model of the sharing economy, and it is a service that rents or uses a car for the necessary time without owning a car. This industry is growing due to various factors such as technological advances, increasing awareness of environmental protection, and increasing demand for solving traffic congestion problems in cities. Accordingly, there is a need for a strategic approach for companies providing car-sharing services to respond quickly to market changes in order to expand market share and differentiate services. Accordingly, this study conducted a case study on open innovation activities between Gongcar and existing rental car companies, focusing on the research question "What effects do open innovation activities between car-sharing companies and existing rental car companies cause?" As a result of the study, it was confirmed that Gongcar have (1) the ability to actively respond to market fluctuations by establishing a flexible vehicle supply chain based on demand, (2) have significantly reduced growth capital expenditure (Growth Capex), and both cafe and rental car companies have (3) performed successful open innovation by improving key KPI indicators and recording financial performance. This study reveals how open innovation acts as a key business growth engine in the car-sharing industry, and its significance is found in that it empirically confirmed the successful implementation conditions of open innovation based on resource dependence theory.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.195-205
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• 2022

This study aims to investigate the relationship between Corporate Venture Capital(CVC) investments and firm innovation, exploring the moderating effect of corporate ESG risk on this relationship. First, adopting the organizational learning theory, I theorize a process in which a firm's relationship with a venture through CVC investments acts as an external innovation source for learning and ultimately short-term innovation. Also, based on the discussion of the stakeholder theory, I argue that when a firm is evaluated as having high ESG risk externally, this may have a negative moderating effect that weakens the relationship between CVC investments and innovative performance. In order to verify these hypotheses, panel data analysis was performed using CVC investments data, patent application data, and ESG risk scores of US high-tech firms from 1993 to 2018. As a result of the analysis, as expected, it was found that the more the firm invests in ventures through CVC, the more the firm's innovative performance increases. In addition, the social aspect of ESG risk of a firm, related to the local community and employees, were found to weaken the association between CVC investments and innovative performance. This study expands the understanding of existing research on CVC investments as a vehicle for learning and innovation. Focusing on the importance of relationship with ventures rather than the size of CVC investments, I empirically examined that the formation of CVC relationships with ventures is directly related to the short-term innovation of investing firms. Additionally, this study contributes to the CVC literature by including stakeholders in the current discussion in addition to investing firms and portfolio ventures. Finally, this study investigated how ESG issues, which are attracting attention as playing an important role in firm activities, are related to CVC investments.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.129-146
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• 2014

In order to be successful in the very changeable competitive environment, the organization has to creative not only on the research and development but also on the Value Chain. Especially for the middle and small venture companies, they have to be creative on the Value Chain to get new profit. For the value innovation, kinds of factors which initiate the value innovation such as Meaningful Work, Risk Taking, Customer Orientation, Agile Decision-Making, Business Intelligence, Open Communication, Empowerment, Business Planning, Learning Organization and other similar factors should be included in the organization culture. By focusing on the above 9 factors with value innovation culture, the study practically analysis the effect of the Value Innovation Culture on the Individual Creativity, and the followings are the result of the study. Firstly, meaningful work, empowerment and risk taking are positively associated with expert knowledge which is one component of individual creativity. Secondly, open organization is confirmed to be positively associated with creative thinking skills. Thirdly, learning organization, empowerment and innovativeness are the factors which is positively associated with Intrinsic Motivation. These results have showed the employees' individual recognized Value Innovation Culture is confirmed to be helpful on inducing Individual Creativity.

• Korean small business review
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.69-102
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• 2020

Shedding new light on the research trend on entrepreneurial ecosystems in the 40-year history of the Asia Pacific Journal of Small Business, this study aims at exploring a potential measurement framework of ecological inputs and outputs in an entrepreneurial ecosystem that promotes entrepreneurship at geographical and spatial levels. As a result of the analysis of research on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the journal, we found that prior studies emphasized the managerial importance of various ecological factors on the premise of possible causalities between the factors and entrepreneurship. However, empirical research to verify the premised causality has been underexplored yet. This literature gap may lead to unbalanced development of conceptual and case studies that identify requirements for successful entrepreneurial ecosystems based on experiential facts, thereby hindering the generalization of the research results for practical implications. In that there is a growing interest in creating and operating productive entrepreneurial ecosystems as an innovation engine that drives national and regional economic growth, it is necessary to explore and develop the measurement framework for ecological factors that can be used in future empirical research. Hereupon, we apply a conceptual model of 'input-output-outcome-impact' to categorize individual environmental factors identified in prior studies. Based on the model. We operationalize ecological input factors as the financial, intellectual, institutional, and social capitals, and ecological output factors as the establishment-based, innovation-based, and performance-based entrepreneurship. Also, we propose several longitudinal databases that future empirical research can use in analyzing the potential causality between the ecological input and output factors. The proposed framework of entrepreneurial ecosystems, which focuses on measuring ecological input and output factors, has a high application value for future research that analyzes the causality.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.1-16
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• 2018

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries prepared the sixth industrialization certification system to increase the added value in the agricultural sector, but it is a bit hard to judge that the system has been in the stage of creating sufficient added value. In particular, because of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there is a significant change in all industry sectors, including innovation in technology, and the change of perception among the society members is being rapidly changed toward the corporate sector's social role. Thus, we surveyed companies that received the sixth industrialization enterprise certificate to address this phenomenon and find clues on how to be competitive. We selected 800 companies certified by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as sixth industrialization enterprises as our study samples. Among them, we subjected 275 respondents to a final analysis upon eliminating incomplete responses. The result of the study revealed that entrepreneurship, including autonomy that reflects the characteristics of the certified companies, had a significant positive impact on economic value. Moreover, with the size of the companies certified as the sixth industrialization enterprise and the industry trend toward the innovative Fourth Industrial Revolution considered, the strategic orientation including the customer orientation to intensively focus on customer needs and the technology orientation to accept technology as a competitive sector even in the agricultural industry was found to have a significant positive effect on economic value. Strategic orientation demonstrated a significant positive effect on social value. Entrepreneurship demonstrated a significant positive effect on economic values but did not significantly affect the social value. Lastly, while strategic orientation has demonstrated that no mediation effect resulted due to a high direct effect between entrepreneurship and economic value, a complete mediation effect occurred between entrepreneurship and social value. Based on this study, if the companies that received the sixth industrialization enterprise certificate are equipped with not only entrepreneurship but also strategic orientation for customer-oriented thinking and response to technological changes, they can become an influential element in creating not only economic value but also social value, which is emphasized as an element of sustainability.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.173-180
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• 2014

In this research, we aim to analyze how different external knowledge search strategies of small and medium enterprises affect technological innovation. In particular, since there has been little comparison between Korean small and medium firms, we investigated the differences of the two groups by employing the "Korean Innovation Survey 2010." As a result, it was found that "external search breadth", which refers to expanding the spectrum of external knowledge search due to lack of resources and capabilities inside small firms, spurred technological innovation. On the other hand, "external search depth", which implies seeking a long-term and close relationship with the subjects that provide outside knowledge for medium firms, catalyzed technological innovation. These results emphasize that we need to separately analyze technological innovation of small and medium firms, which was, in most previous studies, viewed as one group, i.e. SMEs. In addition, the results can be, from the perspective of a firm's growth, interpreted as follows. That is, it is more effective to formulate a "diversity" pursuing strategy in the "small firm" stage where little time has passed since its establishment, whilst it is more useful to apply a "focus" strategy on sophisticated knowledge in the "medium firm" stage where a firm has grown to some extent.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.101-113
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• 2018

This paper investigates the relationship between external search strategy and radical innovation performance. As the discrepancies that can exist among the varying sources of external knowledge is overlooked, the existing literature on the effect of external search strategy on radical innovation performance remains inconclusive. This study aims to reconcile such mixed findings by recognizing that external knowledge can be distinctive depending on the environment in which its source is embedded in; specifically, this paper examines the relationship between external search strategy and radical innovation performance by distinguishing external search from 'market' and 'non-market' relationships. We test our hypotheses with a sample of 431 firms from the manufacturing industries from the 2010 STEPI survey. Our empirical findings suggest that external search strategy from market relationships positively influences radical innovation performance, while the influence of external search strategy from non-market relationships is found to be not significant. Our research suggests that in order to improve radical innovation performance, firms must be able to maintain a cooperative relationship with other actors connected with market relationships and to effectively exploit the market knowledge obtained from these actors.