This case study is concerned with the internationalization process of Korean venture firms. Nowadays, many Korean firms, not only large firms but small and medium-sized firms, are going abroad by many reasons. This thesis is focused on the venture firms that tried to expand their business areas to foreign countries, especially to USA, and tries to analyze their internationalization process. The primary objectives of this thesis are, 1) to find the relationship between the characteristics of firms and their motivation, form, and the timing of internationalization. 2) to identify the difficulties and the ways to solve them faced by venture firms in the process of internationalization.
To achieve these objectives, research framework developed and the exploratory case studies on 8 Korean ventures firms are conducted.
Through the in-depth case studies, 16 observations on the motivation, process and performance of internationalization, success and failure factors of internationalization, difficulties at each stage of development and approaches to solve them are identified.
The results show that the firm’s level of technological capability, market attractiveness in the target market, top management’s willingness and experience on internationalization, the degree of utilization of foreign experts and the legal form of organization are related to the success of internationalization.
Finally, this study generates 6 hypotheses based on the observations. Although the results of this study are exploratory and descriptive, the observations might be helpful to the firms that have plan to go foreign countries.
