Is Equity-Financing Always Optimal for Innovative SMEs? --How ...

第 25 期sector-specific themes such as low-cost-energy SMEs. However, it shares different roots andmore importantly, the different strength or different degree of innovativeness came to matter.The government pretty sophisticatedly incorporated a sense of “choice and focus” onindividual SMEs as well as sectors with more specific theme.The third segment existed as a small fraction of the first segment. However, it wassignificantly extended to be treated as an independent segment primarily after the currencycrisis in 1997 during which many people lost jobs and pushed to open small business forliving.I would like to call the first policy segment as “classical,” the second “shaping,” and thethird “adaptive.” In the past, these three were nested in a chronological hierarchy prettyclearly, divided at first with a little overlapping, although the second segment sounds morelike something out of priority: most of institutions dealing with the first segment was underfiscal policymakers.But roughly after 2000, the three segments are becoming more and more heading into a“parallel” structure, meaning the fall in importance of the first segment and the rise of theother two. Also, as I described with the episode above, segments are increasingly convergingto create larger areas of overlapping.At the end of this year, a former president of a federation of start-up clubs fromuniversities in Seoul city came to see me for consultation on his business model. His planwas to start as a small flagship shop to sell “lunch packs for beauty,” reasonably priced lunchbox made of healthy organic vegetables. He will also use the Internet and mobile to advertiseand to get delivery orders. He also planned hiring of unemployed youth as part timers fordelivery at first, and later to promote them to be franchisees when his business grows to a166