Helping to grow on a shoestring? The role of strategy for global startups

76 Pages Posted: 25 Jan 2023 Last revised: 23 Jan 2024

See all articles by Nataliya Langburd Wright

Nataliya Langburd Wright

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Management

Date Written: November 7, 2023

Abstract

Can strategy help startups compensate for constraints in local endowments like venture capital, market size, and talent pools that prior work finds important for startup performance? This paper addresses this question by interviewing executives of 253 scaling software ventures from over 30 economies and scoring the alignment of their market and organizational choices to detect whether they have a strategy, developing the first dataset of its kind. The study finds that having a strategy negatively moderates the relationship between HQ city and economy endowments and startup performance. This effect is concentrated among startups in more irreversible circumstances. The results suggest that strategy is a substitute for local endowments, with the potential to help startups overcome resource scarcities that constrain growth around the world.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Strategy, Technology Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Scaling, International Entrepreneurship, Strategy

JEL Classification: M13, M16

Suggested Citation

Wright, Nataliya, Helping to grow on a shoestring? The role of strategy for global startups (November 7, 2023). Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 23-041, Columbia Business School Research Paper No. 4335210, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4335210 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4335210

Nataliya Wright (Contact Author)

Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Management ( email )

3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
United States

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