Sogang professor wins top paper award at 2026 Korean Academic Society of Business Administration conference

A joint study by Sogang University business professor Kim Yoo-jin and Ewha Womans University professor Choi Seung-ho has won the top paper award at the 2026 Korean Academic Society of Business Administration Convergence Conference.

The conference took place from Aug. 18 to 20 at Jeju Shinhwa World and is described as South Korea’s largest business administration academic event. The paper, titled “Begin Again: Post-Failure Search Behaviors and Breakthrough Innovation,” examines how companies search for new opportunities after failed development projects.

Using long-term data from the pharmaceutical industry, the researchers classified companies according to the technology used in failed drug projects, including their mechanism of action, and the markets they targeted. They then examined which elements companies retained and which they changed after failure.

Companies that maintained their existing technological base while keeping the same target market or expanding into a new market showed a higher likelihood of pursuing breakthrough innovation. By contrast, companies that changed their technological base while continuing to target the same market showed a negative relationship with breakthrough innovation.

The study also found that consistency in research and development had a stronger effect on breakthrough innovation among companies that had experienced more failures with new technologies. Kim said the findings suggest that failure itself does not automatically influence innovation. Instead, maintaining a consistent technological direction after failure can promote learning and help companies pursue new forms of innovation.

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These results suggest that failure itself does not have a meaningful impact on innovation. Maintaining a consistent technological direction in research and development after failure promotes learning from failure and enables companies to pursue new types of innovation.