Foundation Motives and Success Factors of Professional-User Entrepreneurship: Cases in the Korean Dental Device Industry

The purpose of this study is to provide a new perspective to explain the motivation and success factors for professional-user entrepreneurs (PUEs), which has not been studied until recently. For achieving this purpose, we have studied seven cases of PUEs in the dental device industry. As a result, PUEs in dental device industry was more motivated by intrinsic factors than extrinsic factors, and ‘enjoyment’ was the most motivating factor of entrepreneurship among intrinsic factors. In other words, the process of solving problems and commercializing the results of solving them is a pleasure to PUEs, and that's why they started their own business. We also identified the three key success factors of PUEs: 1) utilizing active user community both before and after commercialization stage; 2) establishing strong networking with various participants such as dentists, universities, research institutes, government and buyers; 3) the importance of long-term practice and invention experience rather than longer education. Finally, we compared how PUEs differs from end-user entrepreneurs(EUEs), technology-based entrepreneurs, and general entrepreneurs regarding entrepreneurial motivation, user community, networking, relevant experience, and educational level.