With rapid changes in industrial environments, the role of start-ups and their initial attempts toward the market are regarded as critical initiates. To increase the number of young start-up entrepreneurs, it is important to understand the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and its antecedents. Drawing on the organizational learning theory, we adopt the concept of exploration and exploitation as mediating roles of entrepreneurial intention as individual-level perspectives. Additionally, we consider innovativeness, self-efficacy, and internal locus of control as antecedents of two learning activities. The results indicate that each learning activity successfully supports the entrepreneurial intention, which requires a complex decision-making process and long-term efforts. This research discusses practical implications and guidelines for entrepreneurship education programs further.

This study analyses the dynamic capabilities and new product development performance for high-tech small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Korea. This study reveals the resources and activities that underlie dynamic capabilities. We apply the concept of dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing and managing threats/transforming capabilities) based primarily on the model of Teece. Based upon a literature review, resources and activities (such as organizational slack, knowledge reconstruction, and exploration) were identified as contributing to reinforce the dynamic capabilities of firms. Data were obtained from survey results collected from 241 Korean SMEs. Empirical results show that knowledge reconstruction activities that discard existing and established technological assets influence dynamic capabilities; however, organizational slack exhibits no significant relationship with dynamic capabilities. Exploration activities such as building network, exploration of external information, and academic activities show a negative influence on dynamic capabilities. Sensing capability, opportunity seizing capability and transforming capability that underlie dynamic capabilities show a positive effect on new product development performance on a collective and aggregate level versus an individual basis.

This study investigated the effect of patent value on the renewal (survival) of patents. The private value of patents can be one of the main pillars sustaining a firm’s value, and the estimation of the value may contribute to the strategic management of firms. The current study aimed to confirm the recent research findings with survival analysis, focusing on the more homogeneous patent data samples. In this study, a dataset is constructed from a cohort of 6646 patents from the 1996 and 1997 application years, using patent data from the European Patent Office (EPO). We found that the family size and non-patent backward citations exhibited profound impacts on patent survival. This result is in line with numerous studies, indicating the positive impact of science linkages in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields. It was also found that the effect of the ex-post indicator is not as strong as the ex-ante indicators, like traditional family size and backward citations. In short, the family size matters most for the survival of patents, according to the current research.

This paper attempts to fill a research gap of literature by constructing the dynamic model into which both ex ante and ex post patent value indicators are incorporated. A patent renewal model is tested using a large set of Pharmaceutical patents granted by the European Patent Office between 1996 and 2009. We test five ex ante indicators and single ex post indicator including family size, patent backward citations, backward references to non-patent literature, number of claims, number of inventors, renewal fee, patent age, application year, and the ex post indicator forward citations. Empirical findings show that three citation related indicators, family size, and the number of claims are positively associated with patent values, while the number of inventors, renewal fee, patent age, and application year are negatively correlated. In addition, forward citations seem to have persistent learning effects on patent values.

As the number of research grants distributed to academic research in science has been continuously increasing, it is necessary to examine various factors that affect research quality. While there have been a large number of studies on factors that affect research productivity or performance, their empirical results have been quite inconclusive and conflicting. We argue that one of the reasons for mixed results involves the measurement of research performance. To tackle the problem, we measure the quality of government-funded research through journal impact factors as well as journal rankings, considering the specific features of academic disciplines. We find that the magnitude and degree of factors vary depending on how research quality is measured. More interestingly, several variables including researchers’ ages, the number of authors, and international collaboration show completely different results according to the level of journal ranking. Based on the empirical results, we suggest policy interventions that can improve the quality of government-supported research.