Entrepreneurship carries on technological progress, wealth and job creation in the pursuit of business opportunities for both new ventures and existing firms. The use of external resources is important for new ventures to survive and earn profit in the pursuit of opportuinities.
Previous studies on the factors affecting the performance of new ventures have focused on the characteristics of entrepreneurs. But recent studies have found several determinants of venture performance.
The main objectives of this study are as follows:
1) What are the factors that affect the performance of technology-based new ventures in Korea?
2) What are the relationships between the degree of networking and performance of new ventures?
3) What are the factors that affect networking of new ventures?
Based on the existing literatures on the new venture‘s performance, 4 factors are derived such as: i) opportunities, ii) entrepreneur, iii) the characteristics of new ventures, and iv) networking.
A field study is undertaken to test hypothesized relationships and data are collected from 57 new ventures which are less than 10 years old. Hypotheses are tested by correlation analysis, multiple regression, fisher‘s z-test. In addition in-depth case studies on five new ventures were carried out.
The major results of this study are as follow. First, the characteristics of opportuinties and entrepreneurs affect the subjective performance, but these factors are not significantly related to the objective performance.
Second, technological capabilities are important to the performance of new ventures in Korea. These results are corresponding to previous researches.
Third, the degree of networing of new ventures are related to the peformance. In using external resources, the frequency of networking activities is significantly negative related to the performance but the importance of networking activities is significantly positive correlated to the performance.
Fourth, the characteristics of oppoutunities, entrepreneurs, and new ventures are related to the degree of networking of new ventures.
Finally, the managerial implication and limitations of this study are described and future research directions are suggested.
