Strategic management in Polish startups: strategy vs business model approach – research results

Abstract

Startups` inherent qualities, as well as their crucial role in development, implementation and diffusion of improved goods and services, which reduce the use of natural resources or increase societal inclusion, enabled to identify two main goals of the paper. The first one is to get more insight into the way strategy and business model are used in startups. Second goal is to take a closer look at the relationship between them to find out, which one – if any – dominates. The way startup uses these approaches is going to have a significant impact on: implementation of management methods and tools, process of strategy identification and implementation, as well as business model innovation (BMI) management. Since BMI provides mechanisms to assist the innovation process for embedding sustainability, it can be viewed at as an alternative to product or process innovation. Hence, the way BMI is implemented is critical not only for sustainable product and service innovation, but also startup`s sustainable growth. The five-step research procedure included both qualitative and quantitative research methods, main one being survey questionnaire. The sample comprised 152 Polish startups. Research results confirmed, that both strategy and business model approaches were used by the sample companies. It means that well-known and established strategic management tools do hold significance also in startups. In the context of relationship between these two approaches, two main conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, all three scenarios included in the research were used; secondly, the most popular one being business model adapted to strategy. Moreover, research results suggest, that there is a point in startup`s life cycle, at which it starts to focus on its strategy, bringing it closer to company model typical for strategic management mainstream.