Human and Relational Capital as a Growth Factor: The Case of Korean New Technology-Based Venture

Developing countries need to strengthen their research capabilities in order to catch up with advanced countries. For this, a country’s activities to develop, adapt, and harness its innovative capacity are critical for its economic performance in the long run (Ernst & Naughton, 2008). As new technology-based ventures (NTBVs) introduce disruptive technologies and perform the role of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship, or “creative destruction,” in the economy, they are an especially important source of new jobs and provide a crucial stimulus to national economies (Audretsch, 1995). So the factors that drive their performances have increasingly attracted the attention of entrepreneur-ship scholars as well as policy makers. While there is considerable literature on factors affecting the survival of new firms, relatively few of these focus on NTBVs, and there are even fewer studies on the individual founders of such ventures (Colombo & Grilli, 2009). Previous studies on the effect of human capital on new firm survival have often employed an insufficient range of human capital types or inappropriate proxies (Gimmon & Levie, 2009).