Firms'technology and market domains change as they grow. This phenomenon has long been studied by many economists and business theorists, but most of them focused only on large established firms. Technology-based new ventures also go through technology/market domain shifts. Since they have scarce resources and weak capabilities compared to large established firms, their motives, types and modes of the shifts must be different with those of large established firms.
The objective of this study is to find out these motives, types and modes of the shifts at each stage of growth, and their effects on the performances. 44 cases of technology/market domain shifts of seven manufacturing ventures in Korea were collected and studied.
The result shows that the motives of the shifts were different according to the stages of growth. The motives were classified into four categories in order of the pressures for change; to overcome the existence crisis, to overcome the limits of the growth potentials of the previous domains, to exploit the synergies between the previous and the new domains, and to realize the visions of the founders. Most of the shifts of the firms were attempted to overcome the existence crisis in the startup stage; to overcome the growth potentials or to exploit the synergies in the initial growth stage; and to exploit the synergies in the high growth stage. This shows that the firms in the earlier stages made changes in their domains when they faced the higher pressures for change.
The types of the shifts also varied with the motives. Most of the firms exploited their prior technological knowledge when the motives of the shifts were to overcome the existence crisis, while most of them used their prior market knowledge when the motives of the shifts were to create synergies.
The level of performances tended to be better when the firms shifted to the domains where they could exploit their prior knowledge. Nevertheless, firms were likely to explore new domains where they didn’t have any prior knowledge, when the motives were to overcome the limits of growth potentials of the previous domains or to realize the visions of the founders.
Although most of the firms only used the modes of internal development and cooperative development, it is showed that the performances were better if the modes and the types of the shifts matched. That is, when the firms exploit their prior knowledge, the performances of using the modes of internal development were better, while the modes other than internal development such as cooperative development and joint ventures performed better, when they tried to explore new domains without prior knowledge. This implies that new ventures can grow successfully by choosing the right mode for each type of the shifts.
기업은 성장함에 따라 기술/시장 영역의 변화를 거친다. 대기업에 비해 자원 역량이 부족한 벤처기업의 변화 양상은 대기업과는 다를 것이다. 본 연구는 7개 제조 벤처기업의 창업 이후 변화 사례 총 44건을 수집하여, 성장단계에 따른 변화의 동기와 유형, 방법의 차이와 이들 사이의 관계 및 성과에 미치는 영향에 대해 분석하였다. 그 결과, 성장단계에 따라 변화의 동기에 차이가 있으며, 특히 성장 초기일수록 변화 압력이 높을 때에 변화를 시도한다는 점을 발견하였다. 변화의 동기에 따라 다른 유형의 변화를 시도하였고, 성과는 유형에 따라 다르게 나타났는데, 사전지식을 활용하는 변화의 성과가 더 좋았다. 그러나 기존 영역의 성장성 한계 극복을 위한 경우나 창업자의 비전 성취를 위한 경우에는 사전지식이 없는 새로운 영역을 탐험하기도 하였다. 대부분의 사례 기업들은 내부개발과 공동개발의 방법만을 시도하였으나, 변화의 유형에 따라 적합한 방법을 이용함으로써 성과를 높일 수 있는 것으로 나타났다.
