• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.187-199
• /
• 2018

This study examined the effects of startup firm's knowledge assets on the effectiveness of their sales strategies, efficiency of sales activities, and management performance, after categorizing these assets into customer knowledge assets and technology knowledge assets. Furthermore, the moderating effects of promotion focus by CEOs and sales managers of startup firms were analyzed. For the analysis, dyadic questionnaire surveys were conducted targeting the CEOs and sales managers of startup firms established at the Gyeongnam Technopark and the KAIST Technology Business Incubation Center in Korea. Hypotheses were verified through structural equation modeling, and moderating effects were identified through ANOVA. CEO's customer knowledge asset strengthened their effectiveness of sales strategies, and sales manager's technology knowledge asset strengthened the efficiency of their sales activities. Also, CEO's effectiveness of sales strategies and sales manager's efficiency of sales activities have been found to enhance startup firm's management performance. Meanwhile, the moderating effect of promotion focus strengthened CEO's effectiveness of sales strategies through CEO's customer knowledge asset and interaction as CEO's promotion focus level increased, but promotion focus of sales managers did not have any significant interaction effect. This study provides implications by offering empirical evidence on startup firms with regard to knowledge assets.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.12 no.6
• /
• pp.81-88
• /
• 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
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.15-26
• /
• 2018

This study examines the effects of failure experience, re-startup's motivation, government support business and education for re-startup on the performance of re-startup firms after failure. In addition, we analyzed how the above factors affect the performance of re-startup firms by the condition of debt and credit problems. As a result of the analysis, the failure experience had no significant effect on the re-startup performance regardless of the credit problem, while re-startup's motivation, government support business and education for re-startup had a significant effect on re-startup firms' performance. In the re-startup group with the credit problem, the re-startup's motivation and the failure experience had a significant influence on the re-startup firms' performance. On the other hand, in the group that did not solve the credit problem, the re-startup's motivation and the failure experience had no significant effect on the re-startup performance, but the government support business and education for re-startup had a significant effect on re-startup performance. The results of this study are as follows: First, it shows that the characteristics of re-startups and the determinants of re-startups are different according to credit problems. Second, this study shows that it takes 56 months on average from the close of business to the re-start, and it may take more than 7 years due to the credit problems and bankruptcy. This suggests the necessity to consider re-startup in the concept of obsolete in consideration of time, when studying the direct/indirect influence of failure experience and re-startup, and establishing policy.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.177-191
• /
• 2023

This study analyzes the types of linkages between major projects used by firms that attracted venture capital among firms that received government support in the field of SME startups. It identifies the types of linkages between support programs related to attracting venture investment and verifies the usefulness of integrated and cooperative support. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, Startup Success Packages, Startup Foundation Funds*, Youth Entrepreneurship Centers, and Training are the main programs used by startups and venture firms, and support-implementing agencies use these programs to provide support for each stage of growth. Second, the majority of startups and venture firms receiving policy support for job creation and manpower enhancement projects. Third, export-type growth companies receive continuous support from MSS, MOTIE, MSIT, and KIPO. Fourth, job creation programs drive the employment performance and creation of companies. Fifth, local government support projects tend to rely heavily on central government support programs. Sixth, growth companies in the startup and venture sector have a clear link to credit guarantee scheme by KIBO. These findings provide empirical evidence on the necessity and feasibility of integrated and collaborative support, and are expected to contribute to the direction of better support policies.

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

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.79-102
• /
• 2018

In an entrepreneurial ecosystem, the failure rate of startups is extremely high at 90%, and every startup that fails becomes an orphan. This phenomenon leads to higher costs of failure for the entrepreneurs in the ecosystem. Failed startups have many lessons to offer to the ecosystem and offer guidance to the potential entrepreneur, and this area is not fully explored compared to the literature on successful startups. We use a case based method distinguishing a failed startup and a successful startup, studying the entrepreneurial characteristics and firm level factors which cause the failures, in the technology startup ecosystem of Bangalore. We study one of the modes of exit adopted by failed startup entrepreneurs and draw key lessons on causes that culminate in failures. We have identified that factors such as the time to minimum viable product cycle, time for revenue realization, founders' complementary skillsets, age of founders with their domain expertise, personality type of founders, attitude towards financial independence and willingness to avail mentorship at critical stages, will decisively differentiate failed startups from the successful ones. Accordingly, implications have been derived for potential entrepreneurs for reducing the cost of failures in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.47 no.6
• /
• pp.97-117
• /
• 2022

Amid the growing importance and growth potential of venture firms worldwide, this study aimed to figure out the effect of new product development capabilities (NPDC) on the internationalization of Korean venture firms and the moderating impact of founders' human capital. NPDC is a core competency that can cope with the rapidly changing market environment and is required when entering multinational markets. Therefore, we subdivided founders' human capital into professional experience, startup experience, education level, and marketing capacity and examined each moderating effect on a venture firm's internationalization. As a result of empirical analysis of 1,362 Korean venture firms using the Tobit model, this study found that venture firms with excellent NPDC tend to achieve a higher level of internationalization. In addition, among the founder's human capitals, professional experience, education level, and marketing competency moderated the positive relationship between NPDC and internationalization. In contrast, the founder's startup experience was insignificant. The results of this empirical analysis explain the factors that trigger the internationalization performance of venture firms from the perspective of dynamic capabilities and suggest that the founder's human capital played an essential role in the internationalization.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.178-189
• /
• 2018

In this paper, we present a case study of a new emerging business startup involved in smart house appliances. The irreversible investment concept and real-option theory are introduced as the fundamentals of the model. By using games theory we show that the startup's actions can trigger reactions from other firms. The first part covers initial the research and development stage, while the second part covers production and commercialization. The findings of this study suggest that, given a certain amount of initial investment, an open and shared innovation may lead to hurting a firm's investment while strengthening the competitors' position in the market. However, given the sensitivity analysis, when volatility and demand grow favorably, sharing R&D investment is not a bad option for a new player to adjust its position in the market while still maintaining positive returns.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.165-176
• /
• 2014

This paper was tried to show the improvement model for software industry structure in Korea regarding to have the global level of competence in Korean software firms. To suggest the improvement model for software industry structure, the detailed status about software industry which as in the supply and demand perspectives and comparativeness dimension were analysed. Also to this model the special survey results from the 35 professionalists in the software industry were included. This improvement model suggests the big software firms have to consider the economy of the scale, and to enter global IT market, the other SMEs have to pursuit themselves as a specified technology firms. So it is good for the oversea project collaboration with the solution provider firms and IT service firms. And it is desirable to make a the economy of scale regarding as the solution venture startup, M&A, networking the software firms as supply chain. Also the development of new business model for new market and firms with the high-tech business competency will be required.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
• /
• v.13 no.6
• /
• pp.177-189
• /
• 2018

Business environment is always full of challenges. Despite various strategic efforts, there are so many failure cases of misfit. With the weaker resource base and institutional foundation, startup firms find it more difficult to find the right spot in the stiff competition. In the middle of evolutionary process, the startup firms need proper strategies meeting the differential challenges along the multiple stages of growth. Following the idea of product life cycle, this study applies the four stages of growth-startup, initial growth, accelerated growth, matured, and decliing. The next step for the startup manager is meeting each stage of growth with proper strategic efforts, including strategy, structure, decision-making pattern, and control method. When the knowledge factor is introduced, there is a potential for higher performance. Based on the 'Detailed Survey on Startup Ventures in 2017,' this study explores the impact of the government subsidy program on the firm competitiveness and performance-along the four stages of growth. In each stage, the strategy factors showed differential impact.