Agile, Stage-Gate, And Their Combination: Exploring How They Relate to Performance in Software Development

This exploratory study investigates the relationship of plan-driven Stage-Gate and flexible Agile models with new product development performance through an original conceptualization that focuses on their underlying principles for managing uncertainty and the resulting changes. While Stage-Gate attempts to control uncertainty up-front to avoid later changes, Agile seeks to adapt to uncertainty and accommodate changes for a longer proportion of the development process. In addition, we examine the interaction effects of combining the two models. The analysis of survey data on 181 software developers shows that the adoption of Stage-Gate principles is negatively associated with speed and cost performance. For Agile, the use of sprints is positively related to new product quality, on-time and on-budget completion, while early and frequent user feedback would seem to prolong time-to-market. Finally, the results highlight a nuanced interaction between Stage-Gate and Agile, both positive and negative depending on the principles considered

The geography of technology-intensive start-ups and venture capital: European evidence

This paper aims at providing novel evidence about the geographical concentration of venture capital (VC) activity in seven European countries. Drawing upon a unique dataset, VICO 2.0, we describe the geographical distribution of VC investments and VC-backed technology-intensive start-ups and analyse the regional and country-level factors associated to the regional concentration in VC activity. Results from econometric estimates suggest that regional VC activity is positively associated to the level of regional knowledge intensity, the level of regional human capital, the local supply of VC investors and a more favourable country’s legal and institutional environment