Effects of internal and external factors on business performance of start-ups in South Korea: The engine of new market dynamics

Abstract

This study explored the effects of the innovation system of start-ups and community support and resources on business performance of start-up companies using a survey of 213 start-ups across the different industry sectors in South Korea. In this article, we adopt the partial least square of structural equation model for analyzing the structural relationships of venture creation activities. First, the findings show that both the local community support and external partnership have significant impacts on the social norms and performance-based culture, but the path coefficient of local community support is somewhat greater than external partnership. Second, the test results also indicate that discovery and exploitation, which can be recognized as the major factors of innovation system in the start-up companies, are highly associated with their dynamic capabilities. Moreover, the dynamic capabilities can be also affected by the social norms and performance-based culture due to the paradigm of open innovation. Third, with regard to the total effect, the combination of discovery and local community support plays a central role for improving business performance of start-ups amid a rapidly changing market and economic environment.