New Venture Growth: Current Findings and Future Challenges

New venture growth is one of the foundational topics in entrepreneurship research. We review the current research and divide it into three research streams: (1) high-growth firms, (2) antecedents of growth and (3) growth process. High-growth firms contribute disproportionally to new job creation, are mostly young, and are not necessarily high-tech. Most firms cannot sustain high growth for extended periods. The research on antecedents of growth examines how various factors (e.g., human capital, networks, financial capital, strategy, external environment, etc.) influence the rate of growth while most of the growth process research is conducted within the stages-of-growth paradigm. We also discuss how to measure growth, which is an important question in itself as it influences research results. We conclude with future research directions

Designing and implementing innovative business models

In this chapter we introduce the concept of business model and business model innovation and provide some guidelines for designing “good” business models. Since this task is generally challenging in that it requires particularly creative reconfigurations, we will also discuss some of the key difficulties that firms may experience when trying to innovate their business model. Reflecting the richness of business model research, we will present three different perspectives. Next, we describe some real-world examples of different business models, and discuss the main reason why incumbents are often slow to react to new business models. We provide two illustrative cases. The first shows how Blockbuster found very difficult to respond to severe disruption in its market created by the innovative business models introduced by new entrants. The second briefly presents the innovative business model of Naked Wines