Innovative Start-ups Research Articles

Membangun Startups Incubator Untuk Membentuk Ekosistem Startups Yang Inovatif Dan Kompetitif

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has driven significant changes across various sectors, with startup emerging as key players in the global economy. Despite their immense potential, many startup face significant challenges, including a high failure rate within the first five years of operation. Design Thinking, a human-centered approach, has surfaced as a solution to address these challenges by helping startup understand user needs, identify problems, and create innovative solutions. This study aims to analyse the application of Design Thinking in building an innovative and competitive startup ecosystem. Using a literature review methodology, this research identifies various tested approaches and strategies, as well as the challenges and opportunities faced by startup in implementing Design Thinking. The findings indicate that the application of Design Thinking can enhance a startup's competitiveness by accelerating product innovation and improving responsiveness to market changes. The main challenges include a lack of understanding of the method and limited human resources with the necessary skills in technology and design. We suggest establishing Startups Incubator, with the framework adapted and modified to include active participation from stakeholder. The Startups Incubator will place members as strategic component of socio-economical system; will create a culture of adaptive innovation that is able to solve problems in society, in line with stakeholder needs, market realities and system complexity. By integrating some Startups Incubators, then we can create startups ecosystem that is continuously innovate and market-competitive.

Navigating the New Frontier: Exploring Emerging Trends and Strategies in Startup Innovation

INTRODUCTION: The contemporary business world is witnessing a proliferation of startups, each striving to carve its niche amidst fierce competition and rapid technological advancements. In this landscape, the ability to innovate and adapt swiftly is paramount for startup survival and growth. This introductory section sets the stage by highlighting the importance of innovation in today's entrepreneurial endeavors. OBJECTIVES: This paper aims to examine the current trends driving startup innovation and explore innovative tactics employed by startups. METHODS: To fulfill the objectives of this study, a comprehensive research methodology was employed. Leveraging techniques derived from social network analysis, qualitative interviews, and extensive literature review, this research endeavors to provide a holistic understanding of the dynamics of startup innovation. By employing a multidisciplinary approach, this study aims to capture the nuanced interplay of factors influencing innovation in the startup ecosystem. RESULTS: Key findings include the prominence of sustainability, remote work integration, and the pivotal role of AI and machine learning in startup strategies. CONCLUSION: This paper concludes by consolidating insights and offering guidance for navigating the dynamic terrain of startup innovation.

Entrepreneurship in Indian Higher Education: Preparing Students for a Start-up Economy

Entrepreneurship has emerged as a critical driver of economic growth and innovation, particularly in India, which boasts one of the world's most dynamic start-up ecosystems. Indian higher education institutions are increasingly tasked with fostering entrepreneurial mindsets and skills to equip students for success in a start-up-driven economy. This shift aligns with national priorities, including initiatives like Startup India and Atmanirbhar Bharat, aimed at promoting self-reliance and job creation. Despite the potential, Indian higher education faces challenges in embedding entrepreneurship as a core component of curricula. Traditional pedagogical models often emphasize rote learning, leaving limited room for the experiential and interdisciplinary approaches necessary for entrepreneurial education. However, a growing number of universities and colleges are now incorporating innovation hubs, start-up incubators, and entrepreneurship-focused courses. These initiatives aim to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, providing students with hands-on experience in problem-solving, risk-taking, and business development. The role of government and private stakeholders is pivotal in this transformation. Partnerships with industries, mentorship programs, and access to venture capital are critical enablers for fostering a vibrant start-up culture within academic settings. Furthermore, integrating entrepreneurial education with digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, prepares students to navigate emerging economic landscapes effectively. As India continues to prioritize start-up-led growth, the entrepreneurial orientation of its higher education system will play a decisive role in producing future-ready graduates. By embedding entrepreneurship into their core missions, educational institutions can nurture a generation of innovators capable of addressing societal challenges and contributing to economic resilience. The convergence of education, innovation, and policy support will be instrumental in sustaining India’s position as a global start-up hub.

The Role of the Academic Incubator as an Acceleration Tool to Foster Entrepreneurship and Academic-Industry Connections

Academic incubators are innovative ecosystems that foster strategic partnerships between academia - industry. By providing resources, infrastructure, mentorship, networking opportunities, and access to academic research and expertise, academic incubators help bridge the gap between research and commercialization, fostering innovation and contributing to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The main purpose of this paper is to show the role of the academic incubator to foster entrepreneurship and academia-industry connections. This study presents a conceptual framework of an academic incubator by describing the key components, processes, and relationships that characterize it. It presents a structured approach to understanding how these entities operate together and contribute to fostering entrepreneurship and enhancing academic-industry connections. The paper describes the main mechanisms to develop a successful academic incubator. In addition, it describes the impact of an academic incubator to foster entrepreneurship and academic-industry connections in various dimensions, as well as the challenges and limitations faced by academic incubators. This paper presents a noble contribution to the development of academic incubators, as well as to understanding their impact in the development of innovative ideas, startups, foster entrepreneurship and Academia-Industry connections. Received: 2 August 2024 / Accepted: 13 November 2024 / Published: 3 December 2024

Financing Startups and Their Role in a Company's Competitive Strategy

The article examines startup financing as a crucial factor in shaping a company’s competitive strategy. Startups are key elements of innovative development, helping companies adapt to rapid market changes by providing them with new technologies and business models. Various mechanisms for financing startups are explored, including venture capital funds, business angels, crowdfunding, incubators, and accelerators, with a focus on how these instruments support startups at different stages of their lifecycle-from pre-seed financing to scaling and market entry. The study highlights the role of startups in companies’ competitive strategies, particularly within the framework of differentiation and focus strategies. Funding innovative startups allows companies to gain access to unique solutions that significantly enhance their competitive market position. For example, companies such as L'Oréal and Google have utilized investments in startups like ModiFace and YouTube, respectively, to expand their market presence and create new products that have become the foundation of their success. An important component of the research is that investing in startups enables companies to diversify their activities, reduce risks, accelerate adaptation to new market conditions, and maintain flexibility. Startup financing, especially in the Ukrainian context, where the startup ecosystem is rapidly evolving, represents a promising direction for company development. Future research prospects lie in a detailed study of risk management models related to startup financing, as well as in analyzing successful examples of large companies’ interaction with startups. Additionally, it is crucial to examine the impact of government support and international investments on the development of the startup ecosystem in Ukraine.

Unpacking the drivers of the socio-environmental sustainability of new ventures: insights from innovative digital start-ups in Italy

Unpacking the drivers of the socio-environmental sustainability of new ventures: insights from innovative digital start-ups in Italy

New Legal Forms and Rules for Italian Innovative Enterprises

New Legal Forms and Rules for Italian Innovative Enterprises

Succeeding in an Era of Volatility: Leadership Strategies for an Uncertain Future

The business landscape has undergone immense changes in recent decades due to factors like globalization, technological disruption, shifting workforce and customer demographics, and economic turbulence, creating a profoundly uncertain and volatile environment that requires constant adaptation for companies to avoid obsolescence. However, by drawing from research on complex adaptive systems and uncertainty management, the article provides strategies for cultivating agile, resilient cultures focused on embracing uncertainty and continuous adaptation to thrive amid unpredictability. Leaders must foster agility through empowering experimentation, risk-taking, and iterative learning from failures to build resilience emphasizing adaptability, interdependence, diversity, communication, and flexibility, while embracing ambiguity recognizes leaders cannot predict the future and respond to new opportunities. Continuous learning and adaptation are also critical using flexible structures, short feedback loops, and scenario planning to identify weaknesses. The article then outlines an adaptive leadership framework to assess an organization's agility, resilience, and change readiness, proposing specific actions to decentralize decision-making, accelerate innovation, strengthen networks, communicate purpose, and conduct regular assessments/reviews, demonstrated through a banking example of innovative digital platforms, startup culture, customer empowerment, and experimentation enabling thriving amid turbulence. By developing cultures focused on continuous transformation over control and adaptability, companies gain strategic flexibility to reconfigure successfully amid unpredictability.

Enabling university and regional conditions to create a thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem

ABSTRACT Can higher education institutions (HEIs) create conditions for a thriving entrepreneur ecosystem? This study analyzed HEIs’ innovation output and measured university leader (UL) perceptions and attitudes toward innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems (EE) by examining medium-sized HEIs with $200 to $300 M in research expenditures located in cities with a population of 250,000 to 500,000 to determine potential gaps in developing entrepreneurs and spurring start-up opportunity. A mixed-method design investigated HEIs’ innovation by building on existing frameworks to identify common attributes of an EE. Given the complexity, challenges, and underdeveloped literature associated with EEs, this article tested a proposed framework for ULs, scholars, practitioners, and policy makers to inform decisions for increased innovation output and start-up creation. The results provide practical recommendations on how leaders can create conditions to spur continued innovation and entrepreneur opportunity for organic start-up growth and economic development.

The Role of Business Incubators in Encouraging Maritime Technology Start-up Innovation

This study examines the critical role of business incubators in driving innovation in maritime technology start-ups. With the growing need for innovative technology solutions in the maritime industry, business incubators have emerged as a key catalyst in developing and introducing new ideas to the market. The study used a qualitative approach, involving in-depth interviews with 30 stakeholders, including start-up founders, incubator managers, and maritime industry experts. The results showed that business incubators provide critical support in the form of access to funding, expert mentoring, research and development facilities, and extensive industry networks. The findings also revealed that incubators that focus on the maritime sector are more effective in helping start-ups overcome industry-specific challenges. The study highlights the importance of collaboration between incubators, the maritime industry, and educational institutions to create an ecosystem that supports innovation. Implications of this study include recommendations for policymakers and industry players in designing more effective incubation programs to drive maritime technology innovation.

The Role of Digital Startups in Addressing Shifts in Fashion Consumer Behavior

This research paper explores the role of digital startups in addressing the evolving consumer behavior within the fashion industry. The paper first uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a conceptual framework to analyze the various factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions in the aforementioned industry before evaluating how the increasing impact of digital transformation and advanced technologies, coupled with a rising emphasis on sustainability, has significantly altered fashion consumer behavior. The latter half of the paper entails case studies of innovative digital startups such as DressX and the Metaverse Fashion Week hosted on Decentraland to understand how these companies are responding to and shaping the future of fashion by addressing these emerging consumer needs. The findings underscore the pivotal role of digital startups in fostering innovation and offering consumers more accessible, convenient, and sustainable fashion experiences.

Laying the Groundwork: Insights from Organisational Ethics for Humanitarian Innovation

Humanitarian innovation is occurring in a wide range of organisational contexts, from innovation labs and hubs, to specialised units within humanitarian organisations, to small social innovation startups and through intersectoral partnerships. Ethical considerations associated with innovation activities have been the source of increased discussion, including critiques around inclusion in the definition of problems, imposition of solutions, introduction of new risks for people in crisis situations and potential for exploitation. To promote ethical innovation, various initiatives have sought to articulate guiding values and to create resources and frameworks to integrate values in project design and implementation. A distinctive yet complementary line of ethical analysis is offered by the approach of positive organisational ethics, which considers the features of organisations that promote and sustain conditions supportive of ethical action. In this paper we examine three dimensions of an organisation’s ethical infrastructure: the resources that are established, such as policies and statements of organisational values; the practices that are enacted, such as methods of onboarding new staff; and the capacities that are fostered and accessed, including ethics knowledge and skills. Attention to these features constitutes an important means of laying the groundwork for organisational conditions that are supportive of ethical humanitarian innovation.

Unpacking innovation in digital multi-sided platform startups: making sense of path creation in generating two distinct types of innovation

Purpose This study aims to investigate the role of effectual logic as the basis of entrepreneurial action in path creation for influencing the performance of open innovation outcomes within the context of digital multi-sided platform (MSP) startups. Design/methodology/approach We utilize the PLS-SEM method with a sample of 70 Indonesian digital MSP startups that have implemented open innovation practices. Findings The empirical findings indicate a path creation between effectual logic and the open innovation process, particularly through the integration of absorptive capacity and crowds or communities management practices. Absorptive capacity development fosters incremental innovation, whereas crowds or communities management practices lead to radical innovation. Originality/value The research findings suggest that, despite limited resources and experience, young entrepreneurs can successfully implement an open innovation strategy for their digital MSP platforms by utilizing effectual logic principles, which capitalize on the external resources provided by digital platform ecosystem members.

Financing green innovation startups: a systematic literature review on early-stage SME funding

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the critical issue of financing early-stage green startups, examining the types of investors and finance models available, the challenges these startups face, and how the green finance ecosystem can better support early-stage investment. Utilizing a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the current landscape. Our findings reveal a significant paucity of data and a bias towards well-established North American and European ecosystems, while highlighting an emerging diversity in private finance sources post-Global financial crisis (GFC), including grants, equity, and crowdfunding. Despite this, there remains a heavy reliance on public funding and a lack of evidence regarding its impact. The inherent characteristics of cleantech – high capital expenditure, long investment horizons, and disruptive nature – necessitate innovative public financing instruments and policies to reduce risk and attract private investment. Our theoretical contribution highlights the necessity for interdisciplinary research and policy collaboration to develop a holistic entrepreneurial finance (entfin) ecosystem. This approach should integrate quantitative economic and qualitative behavioural finance research to address information asymmetries and improve the green economy policy mix. Such a framework will support public-private co-financing, enhance stakeholder engagement, and provide evidence for policy decisions, facilitating more rapid commercialization of cleantech innovations for environmental sustainability.

Human resources well-being in innovative start-ups: Insights from a systematic review of the literature

This study aims to unify the fragmented knowledge on human resource (HR) well-being in innovative start-ups, a critical factor in their success. Through a systematic literature review, we analysed 42 peer-reviewed articles using MySLR software to identify key themes and dimensions in this area. Our findings suggest that HR well-being in start-ups can be understood as a higher-order construct, encompassing three main dimensions: job satisfaction, psychological well-being, and work-life balance, including gender-related considerations. The study's implications are significant for academics and practitioners; as such, the proposed framework serves as a reference model for future research and a practical guide for start-up managers to improve employee well-being. The originality of this study lies in its comprehensive approach to synthesising existing research on HR well-being in start-ups, providing a unified framework that clarifies previously unclear and fragmented findings in the literature.

Digital transformation and social change: Leadership strategies for responsible innovation

The intersection of digital transformation and social change presents a complex landscape for contemporary business leaders. This study explores the experiences of managers from innovative start-ups in Italy, focusing on their strategies for responsible innovation. Through in-depth interviews, key challenges such as rapid technological change, scalability issues, and ethical considerations are identified. The findings highlight the importance of continuous learning, agile business models, and stakeholder engagement. Future scenarios, including the rise of tech-driven social enterprises and decentralized systems, are discussed, emphasizing the need for collaborative partnerships. This research provides practical insights for integrating technological advancement with societal impact.

Failure’s virtues: the seeding of an emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem in a peripheral region

ABSTRACT A key strategy of governments in economically-lagging regions is to provide financial support to innovative start-ups. Yet, if such businesses fail, governments are criticized for ‘wasting tax-payers money’. This paper challenges this narrative. It provides a case study of Consilient Technologies, located in St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada’s most economically under-developed province. The company had developed technology for the emerging cellular-phone market. It received significant funding from the Federal and Provincial governments. It recruited talent who would have left the province to seek employment and attracted others back to the province. It provided its workforce with the opportunity to acquire new competences, experience and knowledge along with entrepreneurial learning. Following its closure, its employees either moved to other technology firms in the emerging local entrepreneurial ecosystem or started their own businesses. The company also had significant demonstration effects for aspiring technology entrepreneurs. The study demonstrates to policy-makers that businesses that they support but which subsequently fail can nevertheless have a positive impact on the ecosystem. Accordingly, they need to have need to a tolerance for failure.

Venture Clienting in Corporate Practice: What type of Established Companies are Using the Venture Client Model?

Start-ups have become a pillar of EC' open innovation initiatives. With the aim of accessing start-up innovation, established companies (EC) use various corporate venturing modes. However, as established corporate venturing modes (e.g. corporate venture capital or accelerators) do not provide direct access to start-up innovation, the venture client model (VCLM) is receiving increasing attention in corporate practice. In the VCLM, ECs become paying customers of start-ups without taking equity - they become venture clients. In joint pilot projects, they apply start-up solutions to their products, processes or business models in order to solve relevant business problems and create strategic impact for increased competitiveness. The literature lists different EC using the VCLM such as BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Siemens, or ZF. This suggests that the VCLM is only used in EC with tens of thousands of employees, from Germany and in technology-intensive sectors such as automotive, mechanical engineering or telecommunications. On the other hand, GIMMY describes the suitability of the VCLM for any EC. However, in order to develop practical solutions to the challenges of the VCLM (e.g. slow purchasing, legal and IT processes or lack of acceptance of start-ups as collaboration partners), it is necessary to know the users (type of EC) of these solutions. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to characterize the EC using the VCLM with respect to industry, size and regionality.

The Role of Innovation in the Success of Modern Startupreneurs

The study examines Innovation Capability, Team Creativity, External Environ- ment, and Start-up Performance as key research factors, the study attempts to investigate the impact of innovation in the success of contemporary businesses. Innovation Capability, Team Creativity, External Environment, and Start-up Per- formance are the research factors that were examined. (Start-up Function). Through surveys of start-ups in a variety of industry sectors, the data was gath- ered. The analysis’s findings demonstrate that a start-up’s performance is sig- nificantly impacted by its capacity for innovation. It has also been discovered that team creativity is crucial for enhancing innovation and startup performance. The creativity driving innovation is significantly enhanced by frequent brain- storming sessions and diverse team backgrounds, the diversity of backgrounds within the team, and the degree of team collaboration. Furthermore, govern- mental regulations, technological accessibility, and cooperative networks with academic institutions are examples of the external environment that fosters cre- ativity and improves start-up performance.The study’s conclusions highlight the importance of innovation in the success of contemporary startupreneurs. Sup- porting innovation and enhancing business performance also heavily depends on the inventiveness of the team and a favorable external environment. Therefore, strategic measures to success in contemporary entrepreneurship include devel- oping an ecosystem that fosters invention, managing team dynamics skillfully, and establishing an organizational culture that values creativity

The role of local institutional quality for the digital and environmental transitions in Italy

In this paper we analyze the effect of institutional quality on the so-called Twin transition at provincial level in Italy. To carry out the analysis, we use two proxies for the ecological transition, namely waste management and air pollution, and two proxies for the digital transition, namely ultra-wide band connections and provincial innovative start-ups. All the models are estimated on a panel of 103 provinces with a time dimension that varies for the different dependent variables. We employ Spatial Durbin Model estimator to take into account spatial dependence across provinces. Our findings indicate that the quality of local institutions may have an important role for the ecological transition, but not for the digital transition. Higher levels of institutional quality increase the performance in waste management and reduce the level of local air pollution. Conversely, the estimated coefficient of institutional quality is not statistically significant neither for ultra-wide band nor for innovative start-ups. Institutional quality turns to be significant but negative for the digital transition when dummy variable controlling for the presence of science-oriented university is added in the model specification. These results confirm that the green transition is largely policy-driven and the local ‘institutional environment’ is an essential ingredient for its effectiveness. The driving forces of the digital transition, instead, can be better found in socio-economic factors that depend on the ‘economic quality’ of the local system and its propensity to innovate within larger-scale innovation trajectories.