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 Introduction
• Background

This report is written for the course Business Research 1 at Amsterdam University of Applied
Sciences in order to analyze and describe the available data from the Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor, also known as ‘GEM,’ on the perceived opportunities in South Korea. This is a
secondary research conducted using quantitative data sets from GEM and The World Bank.
South Korea is known for its struggle with North Korea, but over the last decade, it also
became known to be one of the biggest economies in the world. For years, ever since the
1960s, it was considered to be an agriculture-based economy while now it is the 11th largest
economy in the world. One of the many reasons for this is the rising interest in doing business
with other countries. In fact, according to the World Bank, South Korea is the fourth in terms
of overall Ease of Doing Business. (The World Bank, n.d.)

• Description of the country

South Korea is located in East Asia in the southern portion of the Korean peninsula and it
borders in the north with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as North
Korea, the East Sea to the east, the East China Sea in the south and to the west the Yellow Sea
(Enciclopedia Britannica, 2020) and the country’s size is around 100,210 Km squared. In
2018 the country’s population was confirmed to be 51.6 million and it is still growing to this
day (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, n.d.) and South Korea’s capital is Seoul (서울) with a
population of 9.8 million people. The official national language is Korean. The
entrepreneurial environment of South Korea is constantly improving. Based on a survey
conducted by NES in 2018 where they scored the country’s entrepreneurial environment on a
scale from one to ten, South Korea got an average of 4.93 which is higher compared to all the
previous years. Innovative entrepreneurship is very important for South Korea, in fact, “the
level of innovation is very similar to the level of innovation in U.S.A and higher than Japan,
Taiwan or China.” (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, n.d.) In recent years the rate of
entrepreneurs who are found to be innovative is around 30% as an exception for 2015. Within
the course of one generation, this country was able to switch from being one of the poorest to
one of the richest, and this majorly because of innovation. Most companies in the country
believe that innovation is the key for a good economy, and this is shown by companies such
as Samsung that have helped the development of the country through their innovative
technology and continue to create new high-tech devices every year.

• Problem Analysis
In 2019 the Country’s GDP was 334,977 million dollars and it is expected to grow by 2.4% in
the year 2020, while the exports are forecast to increase by 3% (Market Watch, 2019).
Because South Korea has an innovation driven economy, the government wants to help
maintain the amount of innovation brought by companies, and at the same time the
proportion of entrepreneurs with high-growth expectations is relatively high. Because of this
the new entrepreneurs with new inventive and innovative ideas are necessary. As much as the
existing companies may bring innovation, different people bring different ideas and
competition will help stimulate this innovative growth. The problem is making sure that
people perceive an opportunity in creating a successful firm in their respective area, because
in case this would not be perceived, then there is a high possibility that the countries growth
will eventually stop. If this happened the country would not be able to compete with other
great powers such as U.S.A. The goal of this study is to see the changes of how innovation
has developed in South Korea between the years of 2011 and 2018
• research question
How has the innovation rate developed in South Korea?

• Organization of the report

The next chapters will give more input in the previously asked research question. Chapter
three will introduce and discuss the results of a GEM analysis of the GEM variable. Facts
about what has been going on with the country will be compared with a graph that shows the
behavior of the variable in order to find out how the economy has affected and correlates to
the perceived opportunity or vice-versa. Later the same will be done with a World Bank
variable. Lastly there will be a correlation analysis that will help visualize if there is, in fact, a
correlation and whether this is positive or negative. Chapter 4 will be the conclusion. Here
the main research question will be answered and the importance of it will be explained as
well.

• Methodology
• Introduction

Research methodology is the specific procedures or techniques used to “identify problems,

gather data, analyze them, and draw valid conclusions from them” (Sekaran & Bougie,
2016), or in other words, the means by which data is collected and analyzed. The purpose of
this section is to give further insight in the validity, reliability and understanding of this
research paper. In this chapter methodology will be discussed with regard to viewing the
GEM data (section 2.2), the World Bank data (section 2.3) and this report (section 2.4) in the
light of the elements of research design.

• GEM data

As previously mentioned in chapter 1.1, GEM stands for “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor”.
As it is described in their website, after its foundation in 1999 by national teams, “the
consortium has become the richest source of reliable information on the state of
entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems across the globe” (Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor, n.d.), in fact, it provides a GEM Global Report as well as a range of national and
special topic reports every year from 115 economies by surveying at least 2000 adults and 36
experts from each one. In short, GEM provides insights about the different aspects of
entrepreneurship around the world.

GEM’s research is primary, this means that their data and research is directly collected by the
national teams which compose GEM (Purdue University, n.d.). The data and research are
collected via the survey research strategy “a system for collecting information from or about
people to describe, compare, or explain their knowledge, attitudes and behavior” (Sekaran &
Bougie, 2016) to then be categorized between 15 indicators of entrepreneurial attitudes. The
two surveys used are Adult Population Survey (APS) and National Expert Survey (NES). In
short, the APS “explores the role of the individual in the lifecycle of the entrepreneurial
process” (Global Entreprenurialship Monitor, n.d.) and it focuses on the business
characteristics and the people’s motivation for starting and running a business as well as
entrepreneurship related attitudes. The NES “identifies nine factors that are believed to have a
significant impact on entrepreneurship” (Global Entreprenurialship Monitor, n.d.), these
factors are known as Entrepreneurial Framework Conditions (EFCs).

What will be looked at in this report is the Innovation Rate which is described as “percentage
of those involved in TEA who indicate that their product or service is new to at least some
customers AND that few/no businesses offer the same product” (Global Entreprenurialship
Monitor, n.d.). South Korea is a country that has been through its dark times, but now through
a great push in the countries innovation it has become one of the strongest economies in the
world. To fully understand the country’s behavior and attitudes, looking at numbers would
not be sufficient to create a satisfiable picture, hence the importance of using GEM. GEM not
only analyzes the numbers, but it investigates the personal motivation and situation of the
people involved as well.

• World Bank data

The World Bank is a global partnership with 189 member countries and five institutions that
are “working for sustainable solutions that reduce poverty and build shared prosperity in
developing countries” (The World Bank, n.d.). the five institutions involved are: The
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development
Association, the International Finance Corporation, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

Unlike GEM, The World Bank’s research is secondary, this means that they collect data from
its member countries. The Development Research Group is the World Bank’s “principal
research department and produces the majority of the world bank’s research” and it is also
one of the most influential centers of development research in the world (The World Bank,
n.d.). The objective of the studies is description of the WDI along the six data themes:
poverty and inequality, people, environment, economy, states and markets, and global links
(The World Bank, n.d.)

The World Bank data set will be used in this report to see the change in the annual Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) growth, which is “the total monetary or market value of all the
finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period”
(Investopia, 2020). This will be done to compare and contrast with the change in South
Korea’s innovation in order to have a better understanding in the country’s economic
development throughout the years.
 • Methods of analysis

• Conclusion

• Analysis

• Introduction

This part of the research paper will focus on analysis. Part 3.2 will be a descriptive analysis
of a graph of the GEM key indicator looking into what it is shown, there will also be a
calculation of the mean and standard deviation of the presented graph and explanation on the
relevance of this step. Furthermore, there will be another descriptive analysis in part 3.3,
however, it will be of the GDP growth annual percentage of South Korea over the selected
years. A graph with the calculation of the mean and standard deviation will be shown as well.
The last step will be a calculation of the correlation between the two sets of data from the
graphs, which will be shown in part 3.4. Finally, part 3.5 will be the conclusion to summarize
the most important results.

• Description of analysis of Innovation Rate

The innovation rate should be an important factor of South Korea’s development due to what
its government and most important companies such as Sony have declared is their focus. The
description for how GEM interprets Innovation Rate is the “Percentage of those involved in
TEA who indicate that their product or service is new to at least some customers AND that
few/no businesses offer the same product” (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, n.d.).

Figure 3.1: relationship between perceived opportunity rate over the years

Source: (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, n.d.)

Introduction
The graph shows the development of the innovation rate in South Korea over the years
between 2011 and 2018.

Findings
The innovation rate between the given years has had its ups and downs. It begins in 2011
with an opportunity rate of 15.9 that eventually escalated to 26.53 in the year 2012. In 2013,
while South and North Korea “reopened Kaesong joint industrial complex and hotline.”
(BBC, 2018) the innovation rate fell to 18.27. For the year 2014 no data was provided,
however, until the year 2016 it the rate increased until it reached the peak of 32.8. The rate
thereafter decreases to then rise back to 29.94 in 2018.
Conclusion
Over the years the innovation rate did not increase nor decreased steadily, instead it was
rather fluctuant, however, overall the slope is slowly increasing.

• Descriptive analysis of GDP growth (%)

The Growth Domestic Product growth percentage, also known as GDP growth %, is “the
percentage change in the value of all the goods and services produced in a nation during a
specific period of time” (Investopia, 2020)

•
•

Works Cited
Enciclopedia Britannica. (2020, April 16). Enciclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from
https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Korea
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. (n.d.). GEM. Retrieved from
https://www.gemconsortium.org/economy-profiles/south-korea
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. (n.d.). GEM. Retrieved from
https://www.gemconsortium.org/economy-profiles/south-korea
Market Watch. (2019, December 18). Market Watch. (K. Jun, Producer) Retrieved
from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/south-korea-lowers-2020-economic-
growth-forecast-2019-12-18
The World Bank. (n.d.). Retrieved from The World Bank: https://www.worldbank.org
Sekaran & Bougie. (n.d.).
Sekaran & Bougie. (2016). Research Methods for Business. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. (n.d.). Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.
Purdue University. (n.d.). OWL. Retrieved from
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/
conducting_primary_research/index.html
Sekaran, & Bougie. (2016). Research Methods for Business. John Wiley & Sons.
Global Entreprenurialship Monitor. (n.d.). GEM.
Global Entreprenurialship Monitor. (n.d.). GEM.
Global Entreprenurialship Monitor. (n.d.). GEM.
The World Bank. (n.d.). The World Bank. Retrieved from worldbank.org
The World Bank. (n.d.). The World Bank. Retrieved from worldbank.org
The World Bank. (n.d.). The World Bank. Retrieved from worldbank.org
Investopia. (2020, April 29). Investopia. Retrieved from Investopia.org