Many countries around the world are pursuing various support policies to foster start-ups national widely in order to secure new economic growth engines in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The South Korean government announced the diffusion strategy for the 2’nd round Start-up Boom in March 2019 and is promoting the support policies for start-up incubating by various programs. Many incubators and startup accelerators operate various kinds of programs to foster start-ups using government financial supports. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of entrepreneurship and technical capability of entrepreneurs as the internal factors of the technology-based start-ups and the effects of programs supported by the government as an external factor on the corporate performance of a start-up company, and the mediating effects of core competence of start-ups were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS. The results show that the entrepreneurship, technical capability and the programs supported by incubators or accelerators had no direct effects on the corporate performance of a start-up, but the core competence of the company had complete mediating effects. In addition, the type of program supported by the comprehensive accelerator programs or the marketing supports had effects on the core competence rather than simple financial supports. Lastly, the policy proposals for incubating program support and future research directions along with the limitation are suggested.

Internationalization of SMEs has gathered pace in recent times with falling trade barriers and rising world trade encouraging small firms to seek profits and growth in foreign markets. This has attracted the attention of researchers, and several studies have been conducted in Western nations on the factors influencing the process of SME internationalization. However, hardly any study has been done on SME internationalization in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) region, thus leaving a gap in the literature. This study investigates the influence of four factors, namely, human capital, network competency, entrepreneurial orientation, and market volatility on the degree of internationalization of SMEs in Oman. The study employs survey data collected from 150 SME owners and managers using a structured questionnaire having 27 items, and has been analyzed using correlation and logistic regression, as the dependent variable is binary in nature. The results reveal the impact of the chosen variables on the degree of internationalization of SMEs. The findings of the study suggest that network competency has the highest impact on degree of internationalization of Omani SMEs, followed by human capital and entrepreneurial orientation, while market volatility, though insignificant, moderated the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and degree of internationalization of Omani SMEs.