Knowledge Learning along the Stages of Growth in the Research Based Spin-Offs and It’s Policy Implication

This is a case study of research-based spin-offs which are incorporated to commercialize the technologies developed in universities or research institutes. It examines their knowledge learning patterns and factors to affect them. The firms selected for this study are Kael (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) as an example of spin-offs from public research institute, i-sens (Kwangwoon University), Viromed (Seoul National University), and MarkAny (Sangmyung University) as three cases of university spin-offs. Through analyzing the cases selected, this study suggests theoretical implications on how successful research-based spin-offs are founded in Korea and on what procedures they take as growing up. In particular, this study defines the growing process of research-based spin-offs as knowledge learning process; it classifies the knowledge that firms learn into five types such as basic technology knowledge, product knowledge, market knowledge, production knowledge, and management knowledge; also, it divides the stages of growth into laboratory R&D stage, incorporation stage, market entry stage and growth stage. By doing so, it is intensely examined that how each knowledge is learned in each stage and what the internal and external factors to either accelerate or hamper the process of firms' learning knowledge are. Consequently, based on the discussions above, this study is to provide practical guidelines for entrepreneurs who attempt to start a business in a university or an institute and external resource suppliers to boost research-based spin-offs.