• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.261-275
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• 2024

In response to increasing economic uncertainty and the challenges posed by low birth rates and an aging population, the rapid growth of startups has become a crucial strategy for fostering economic development. In 2023, the Korean government introduced the "Startup Korea" initiative, aiming to attract top talent and capital into the domestic startup ecosystem and shift away from traditional government subsidies toward encouraging private capital investment. However, current national startup policies are limited by their concentration on the capital region and specific industries, raising concerns about the need for more regionally-tailored and sustainable policy approaches. This study seeks to analyze both national and regional entrepreneurial ecosystems, with a specific focus on Seoul, to propose long-term strategies for developing a sustainable and globally competitive entrepreneurial environment. Utilizing the Evidence-Informed Policy Making (EIP) framework, the study first conducted a literature review to analyze national startup policies, Seoul's policies, and the Startup Genome global ecosystem report. Following this, expert interviews and Delphi surveys were conducted with key stakeholders to gather comprehensive evidence. The data was then analyzed to identify key policy areas aligned with the entrepreneurial ecosystem's core components. Finally, policy recommendations were tailored to align with Seoul's unique vision and characteristics, offering sustainable growth strategies for the regional startup ecosystem.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.37-46
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• 2023

This study aims to find satisfactory or unsatisfactory factors that startups either currently being occupied in or already left the business incubator made in a survey with a total of the sixteen firms responded. Among the sixteen, ten were the firms that have occupied in the business incubator and the six firms left the incubator. Mostly, the firms were satisfied with the incubator's roles with showing 4.4 satisfaction. The support for business facilities were the number one factor for the incubator has to do with the firms had positive answers from the firms. However, support for the production or sales showed less satisfaction compared to business facilities, a need that the incubator should improve the roles for the future. The results of this study can contribute to the development of medium and long-term plans for the business incubator.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.81-88
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• 2014

Purpose - Entrepreneurship promotion is emerging as an important economic growth agenda. However, in Korea, entrepreneurship has weakened because of the collapse of the venture bubbles of the 2000s and the global economic recession in 2008, which have induced the business community to choose stability over risk. The Korean government has been implementing several support projects to inspire and promote youth entrepreneurship through various means including financial assistance; however, the perpetuation rate of young entrepreneurship is still low as compared to advanced economies such as the US and EU. This case study focuses on the Youth Start-Up Business Support Program of the Small & Medium Business Corporation, and explores practical alternatives. Further, it aims to suggest managerial factors and a conceptual model for change management factors affecting the business performance creation of a startup company, based on the Small and medium Business Corporation's young venture startup fund. Research design, data, and methodology - Many studies examine the current progress and issues of startup firms, for example, a lack of systematic cultivation of entrepreneurship and startup business training, lack of commercialization funding for youth startup businesses, lack of mentoring, and inadequate infrastructure. From prior research, we address four factors, namely, personal managerial capabilities, innovative business model, sufficient cash flow, and social network, affecting startup companies' business performance. This study involved a sample survey of 200 young entrepreneurs to investigate casual relations between the four factors and business performance. A regression analysis was used to verify the hypotheses. Results - First, in relation to differences in the founder's personal characteristics, age, sales amount, and number of employees significantly impact business performance. Second, regarding the causal relation between the four factors for creating business performance, an innovative business model and social networking have supported the hypotheses, revealing that the more that a start-up founder has an innovative business model and social networking, the more the start-up firms are likely to have better performance (e.g., sales volume, employment, ROE, ROI, etc.). Although the founder's competency and sufficient cash flow have no significant relationship with business performance, the mean value was higher performance for high founder's competency and sufficient cash flow. Conclusions - This study provides basic data on policy support strategies of the Small and Medium Business Corporation, to help young entrepreneurs achieve their start-up business goals. It shows that young entrepreneurship startup firms should strive to explore ideas to satisfy customers' needs, and that changes in customer value and the continuous innovation of business model differentiation are required to actively respond to change management. Moreover, at the infant startup stage, they should activate social network programs to share information, thereby offsetting resource scarcity and managing business risk. Further, the establishment of a long-term vision and the implementation of training programs in related specific fields should be supported to strengthen founders' personal capabilities.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.75-91
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• 2024

Recently, global business environment is changing dramatically along with the acceleration of technological innovation amid the war, climatic change, and geopolitical instability. Accordingly, it is difficult to predict or plan for the future as the volatility, complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty of the industrial ecosystem continue to increase. Therefore, organizations are undergoing inevitable restructuring in accordance with their survival strategy, for instance, removing marginal businesses or firing. Accordingly, office workers are seeking a startup as an alternative for their continuous economic activity amid rising anxiety factors that make them think they would lose their jobs unintentionally. Here, this study is aimed to verify through what paths office workers' self-determination influences the process of converting to a startup. For this study, an online survey was carried out, and 310 respondents' valid data were analyzed through SPSS and AMOS. To sum up the results, first, office workers' self-determination did not have significant effects on entrepreneurial intention. However, it was confirmed that self-determination had positive (+) effects on innovativeness and perception of the startup support system. This result shows that their psychology works to prepare step by step by accumulating innovative experiences and increasing perception of the startup support system from a long-term life path perspective rather than challenging startups right way. Second, innovativeness is found to have positive (+) effects on entrepreneurial intention. Also, perception of the startup support system had positive (+) effects on entrepreneurial intention. This implies that when considering startups, they are highly aware of the government's various startup support systems. Third, innovativeness is found to have positive (+) effects on perception of the startup support system. It is judged that perception of the startup support system is valid for prospective founders to exhibit their innovativeness and realize new ideas. Fourth, it was confirmed that innovativeness and perception of the startup support system mediated correlation between self-determination and entrepreneurial intention, and perception of the startup support system mediated correlation between innovativeness and entrepreneurial intention, which shows that it is a crucial factor in entrepreneurial intention. Although previous studies related to startups deal with students mostly, this study targets office workers who form a great part in economic activities, which makes it academically valuable in terms of being differentiated from others and extending the scope of research. Also, when we consider the fact that the motivation for self-determination alone fails to stimulate entrepreneurial intention and the complete mediation of innovativeness and the startup support system, it has great implications in practical aspects such as the government's human and material support systems. In the selection and analysis of samples, this study exhibits a limitation that the problem of common method bias is not completely resolved. Also, additional definitive research is needed on whether entrepreneurial intention is formed and converted into startup behavior. Academically and practically, this study deals with the relationship between humans' psychological motives and startups which has not been handled sufficiently in previous studies. The conversion of office workers to startups is expected to have effects on individuals' economic stability and the state's job creation; therefore, it needs to be investigated continuously for its great value.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.127-138
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• 2021

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of each of the three sub-dimensional strategic orientations of technology orientation, customer orientation, and competitor orientation, on performance, targeting IT startups based on technology. and to analyze moderating effect of corporate social responsibility, which is more important to modern society. For the analysis, , The IT startups completed empirical research through path analysis after evaluating the suitability of measurement models and structural models using PLS-SEM for 94 companies less than 7 years that have moved in startup support institutions. As a result of the study, the three sub-dimensions of strategic orientation, technology orientation, customer orientation, and competitor orientation, all had a positive (+) effect on startups' performance. and the Corporate social responsibility orientation was verified as moderating the startup's strategic orientation and startups' performance. The results of this study imply the importance of corporate social responsibility orientation in the strategy setting of start-ups, as well as the direction of strategy-setting for technology-based startups for competitive advantage and long-term survival.