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What Makes a New Business Start-Up Successful?

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  • Reid, Gavin C
  • Smith, Julia A

Abstract

This paper seeks a good measure of new business performance, and then explains this measure by various dimensions of business strategy. Three criteria are used to create a one dimensional ordinal ranking of high, medium and low performance for new business starts: employment growth; return on capital employed; and labour productivity. It is shown that statistical cluster analysis provides a convincing separation of a sample of new business starts into high, medium and low performance categories, using a minimum distance criterion for clustering. An ordinal logit model (with selection) is then used to explain this performance ranking. The results indicate that many widely discussed features of small business strategy have little, or even negative, impact on performance. Of the numerous aims that owner managers may adopt (survival, growth etc.), only one appears to have a major impact on performance; the pursuit of the highest rate of return on investment. Many entrepreneurial perceptions of their own capabilities appear false or unimportant, with the exception of organisational features and systems. Copyright 2000 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Reid, Gavin C & Smith, Julia A, 2000. "What Makes a New Business Start-Up Successful?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 165-182, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:14:y:2000:i:3:p:165-82
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Michele Cincera & Lydia Greunz & Jean-Luc Guyot & Olivier Lohest, 2006. "Capital humain et processus de création d'entreprise: le cas des primo-créateurs wallons," Brussels Economic Review, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 49(2).
    2. T Quince, 2001. "Entrepreneurial Collaboration: Terms of Endearment or Rules of Engagement?," Working Papers wp207, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    3. Domingo Soriano & Gary Castrogiovanni, 2012. "The impact of education, experience and inner circle advisors on SME performance: insights from a study of public development centers," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 38(3), pages 333-349, April.
    4. Amrita Lahiri & Anu Wadhwa, 2021. "When do serial entrepreneurs found innovative ventures? Evidence from patent data," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 1973-1993, December.
    5. Davila, Toni & Foster, George, 2005. "Startup firms' growth, management control systems adoption and performance," IESE Research Papers D/603, IESE Business School.
    6. Tiago Oliveira & Maria Fraga O. Martins, 2011. "Understanding the determinant factors of Internet business solutions adoption: the case of Portuguese firms," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(18), pages 1769-1775, December.
    7. Kostas Tsekouras & Dimitris Skuras & Irene Daskalopoulou, 2008. "The role of productive efficiency on entry and post-entry performance under different strategic orientation: the case of the Greek plastics and rubber industry," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1), pages 37-55.
    8. Gavin Reid & Zhibin Xu, 2012. "Generalising Gibrat: using Chinese evidence founded on fieldwork," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 1017-1028, November.
    9. Paloma Escamilla-Fajardo & David Parra-Camacho & Juan Manuel Núñez-Pomar, 2021. "Entrepreneurship and Resilience in Spanish Sports Clubs: A Cluster Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-19, May.
    10. Harold Fried & Loren Tauer, 2015. "An entrepreneur performance index," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 69-77, August.
    11. Marco van Gelderen & Marco van Gelderen & Niels Bosma & Niels Bosma & Roy Thurik & Roy Thurik, 2001. "Setting up a business in the Netherlands," Scales Research Reports H200013, EIM Business and Policy Research.
    12. Soriano, Domingo Ribeiro, 2010. "Management factors affecting the performance of technology firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(5), pages 463-470, May.
    13. Alexandra Tsvetkova & Jean-Claude Thill & Deborah Strumsky, 2014. "Metropolitan innovation, firm size, and business survival in a high-tech industry," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 661-676, October.
    14. Francis J. Greene & Kevin F. Mole & David J. Storey, 2004. "Does More Mean Worse? Three Decades of Enterprise Policy in the Tees Valley," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(7), pages 1207-1228, June.
    15. Fischer, Justina A.V., 2012. "The choice of domestic policies in a globalized economy," Papers 306, World Trade Institute.
    16. Staniewski, Marcin W., 2016. "The contribution of business experience and knowledge to successful entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 5147-5152.
    17. Battisti, Enrico & Alfiero, Simona & Quaglia, Roberto & Yahiaoui, Dorra, 2022. "Financial performance and global start-ups: the impact of knowledge management practices," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 28(4).
    18. Esther Hormiga PEREZ & Rosa M. Batista CANINO, 2009. "The Importance of the Entrepreneur’s Perception of Success," REVISTA DE MANAGEMENT COMPARAT INTERNATIONAL/REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE MANAGEMENT, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 10(5), pages 990-1010, December.
    19. Andrea Rey-Martí & Domingo Ribeiro-Soriano & Daniel Palacios-Marqués, 2016. "Entrepreneurial attributes of human capital and contingency factors in the culinary tourism," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 67-85, March.
    20. Harada, Nobuyuki, 2003. "Who succeeds as an entrepreneur? An analysis of the post-entry performance of new firms in Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 211-222, April.
    21. Barringer, Bruce R. & Jones, Foard F. & Neubaum, Donald O., 2005. "A quantitative content analysis of the characteristics of rapid-growth firms and their founders," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 663-687, September.
    22. Tristan Boyer & Régis Blazy, 2014. "Born to be alive? The survival of innovative and non-innovative French micro-start-ups," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 669-683, April.
    23. Hyytinen, Ari & Pajarinen, Mika & Rouvinen, Petri, 2015. "Does innovativeness reduce startup survival rates?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 564-581.
    24. Fischer, Justina A.V., 2012. "The choice of domestic policies in a globalized economy: Extended Version," MPRA Paper 37816, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    25. Andrew Burke & Stuart Fraser & Francis J. Greene, 2010. "The Multiple Effects of Business Planning on New Venture Performance," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 391-415, May.

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