Executive Summary
Realizing the economic value of AI technology necessitates a commercialization
process—transforming technology into viable products or services underpinned by
sustainable business models. As technology commercialization in knowledge-intensive
domains demands advanced expertise, highly skilled AI professionals possess substantial
potential to maximize the economic returns of AI innovation. Accordingly, there have
been arguments for cultivating such professionals as "entrepreneurial talents"—
individuals who leverage domain knowledge and technical proficiency to identify
opportunities and create new value through entrepreneurial action.
Against this backdrop, the present study conducts an original survey of advanced AI
professionals in South Korea—defined as those holding or pursuing master's and
doctoral degrees in AI-related fields, encompassing current graduate students and
practitioners in public and private sectors—to assess their entrepreneurial orientation
and related experience toward venture creation. An empirical analysis is then
undertaken to identify the determinants of entrepreneurial intention, examining how
entrepreneurial characteristics, attitudes, venture-related experience, and environmental
factors influence the intention to start a business.
The findings reveal that while Korea's advanced AI talent exhibits strong innovation
orientation grounded in technical competence, these individuals lack the practical
capabilities, experiential foundations, and psychological readiness to translate
technological potential into economic value. This suggests that opportunity-seeking
behavior among highly skilled AI professionals is acutely sensitive to deficits in
execution capacity and environmental constraints. It is therefore critical to establish
developmental pathways and supportive ecosystems enabling AI talent to progressively
cultivate higher levels of entrepreneurial engagement—from passive orientations toward
proactive, risk-tolerant action. The study concludes with policy implications including:
expanding experiential opportunities and exposure to entrepreneurial activities; fostering
cultural receptivity toward entrepreneurship; narrowing the opportunity-cost gap
between venture creation and conventional employment; integrating AI talent policies
with adjacent policy domains; and strengthening entrepreneurial network infrastructure.