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This study aims to analyze how startups organize their purchasing activities to improve operative excellence and become attractive customers.

The authors use a two-phase exploratory approach with semistructured interviews and a World Café. In total, 20 startup purchasers and suppliers participated. It is an international study with participants from eight countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA).

The authors find that startups organize the purchasing function in five ways: partial outsourcing, transactional-oriented, strategic only, outsourced purchasing and full department. Each type has advantages and disadvantages regarding operative excellence. The authors identify type-specific antecedents to operative excellence: forecasting, payment habits, ordering process, contact accessibility and quick decision-making.

The value of this paper is that it offers entrepreneurs a framework to organize startup purchasing activities, including outsourcing options. Furthermore, it provides theoretical contributions that expand the topic of purchasing and supply organization and operative excellence to the startup context.

The value of this paper is that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore purchasing organization and operative excellence in startups.

This chapter combines insights from organizational theory and the entrepreneurship literature to inform a process-based conception of organizational founding. In contrast to previous discrete-event approaches, the conception argues that founding be viewed as a series of potential entrepreneurial activities – including initiation, resource mobilization, legal establishment, social organization, and operational startup. Drawing on an original data set of 591 entrepreneurs, the study examines the effect of structural, strategic, and environmental contingencies on the relative rates with which different founding activities are pursued. Results demonstrate that social context has a fairly pervasive impact on the occurrence and sequencing of founding processes, with one possible exception being the timing of legal establishment.

‘Acceleration’, that is, the performance of activities in ever-shorter periods of time, is a distinctive feature of contemporary organizations and societies that is reflected in, and driven by startups’ attempts to scale up their businesses in ever-faster ways. Although prior research has highlighted that temporary organizing is a key way to accelerate the startup process, little is known about how actors do so. Based on a one-year ethnographic study at a startup accelerator, the authors explore how actors enact temporary organizing to attempt to accelerate the startup process. Their analysis shows that this process involves a plurality of partly conflicting temporal structures. As their study shows, such conflicts invoke tensions that actors live out in their daily activities. The authors identify three temporal practices – sequencing, freezing, and merging – through which actors engaged in temporary organizing enact acceleration in the startup process by reconciling these temporal structures. Their study has implications for understanding time in the expanding literature on temporary organizing and acceleration.

Startup companies represent a powerful engine of open innovation (OI) processes. The purpose of this paper is to represent a first step in building a map of the state-of-the-art knowledge of the “startups in an OI context” phenomenon. Through the selection and analysis of relevant literature, this study aims at deepening our understanding of the theme and at providing directions for future research.

By using an explicit method for the review (Pittaway et al., 2004) the authors selected a set of papers, which cover the knowledge domain object of this study. In total, 41 articles about “startups and OI” have been selected and the full papers have been analysed.

The analysed literature has been synthesized in seven sub-topics, which have been evaluated as the most relevant in explaining the phenomenon of startups in relation to OI. Implications for research, for managers and for policy makers conclude the paper.

The review produced valuable knowledge for both managers and policy decision-makers. The paper allows a better understanding of the role of startups in OI processes. This improved understanding can help managers of large firms as well as policy makers involved in OI in making their decisions. Besides, implications of OI strategies for startup managers have been singled-out.

Startup companies are intrinsically open organizations, necessarily engaged in innovation processes. Research at the intersection between the themes of OI and startups is gaining momentum. This review of the literature represents the first attempt to organize the scientific knowledge related to the intersection between the startups and OI phenomena systematically.

It is well known that entrepreneurship is a complex phenomenon, which takes place under great uncertainty. Much of the existing research that explores the venture creation process has assumed a linear, unitary process. The proposal presented in this chapter involves the venture creation process viewed as an iterative, non-linear, feedback-driven system called the Startup Path – a framework that brings together the entrepreneur as an individual, with its journey on the venture creation process.

This paper aims to explain the fundraising and valuation processes of startups and discuss the conflicts of interest between entrepreneurs, venture capital (VC) firms and stakeholders in the context of startup corporate governance. Further, this paper uses the examples of WeWork and Zenefits to explain how a failure of stakeholders to demand an external audit from an independent accounting firm in early stages of funding led to an opportunity for fraud.

The methodology used is a literature review and analysis of startup valuation combined with the Fraud Triangle Theory. This paper also provides a discussion of WeWork and Zenefits, both highly visible examples of startup fraud, and explores an increased role for independent external auditors in fraud risk mitigation on behalf of stakeholders prior to an initial public offering (IPO).

This paper documents a number of fraud risks posed by the “fake it till you make it” ethos and investor behavior and pricing in the world of entrepreneurial finance and VC, which could be mitigated by a greater awareness of startup stakeholders of the value of an external audit performed by an independent accounting firm prior to an IPO.

An implication of this paper is that regulators should consider greater oversight of the startup financing process and potentially take steps to facilitate greater independence of participants in the IPO process.

Given the potential conflicts of interest between VC firms, investment banks and startup founders, the investors at the time of an IPO may be exposed to the risk that the shares of the IPO firms are overvalued at offering.

This study demonstrates how startup practices can be extended to the Fraud Triangle and issue a call to action for the accounting profession to take a greater role in protecting the public from startup fraud. This study then offers recommendations for regulators and standards entities.

There are few academic papers in the financial crime literature that link the valuation and culture of startup firms with fraud risk. This study provides a concise explanation of the process of valuation for startups and highlights the considerations for stakeholders in assessing fraud risk. In addition, this study documents an emerging role for auditors as stewards of proper valuation for pre-IPO firms.

The purpose of this paper is to present the main barriers, practices, methods and knowledge management tools in startups that are characterized as agile organizations with dynamic capabilities to meet the demands of a business environment of high volatility, uncertainties, complexity and ambiguity.

The conceptual basis of the research focused on the triad: agile organization, dynamic capabilities and knowledge management. Field research began by interviewing experts to identify the barriers, practices, methods and knowledge management tools in startups. Based on the theoretical review, on the desk research and on the result of interviews with experts, a quantitative research was carried out with the leading startups coworking of São Paulo city. The obtained data made it possible to develop descriptive analyses and run linear regressions and cluster analysis for exploratory research.

Startups with higher maturity in innovation level, solution development level, and scalability development level, present a higher degree of utilization of the practices, methods and tools dedicated to knowledge management.

It is expected that results of the research presented in detail will be able to illustrate concrete examples of practices, methods, and knowledge management tools for large established companies seeking the organizational agility of startups.

This study contributes to the identification of barriers, practices, methods and tools of management of knowledge in startups, through the conceptual triad: agile organization, dynamic capabilities and knowledge management.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how the integration between knowledge management and dynamic capabilities in contexts that demand organizational agility contributes to the management by objectives.

To achieve the proposed objective, the present paper adopts the single case study in the startup Effecti. For data collection, semi-structured interviews were carried out, analyzed a posteriori through the technique of content analysis. From the loads of evidence observed, a model was presented that consists of different management theories and that guides the management by objectives process of a startup.

The proposed model proves to be able to describe the modus operandi of a startup and enables it to develop the cycles of testing, measurement and seizure of knowledge, largely stimulated and inherent to the creation process of new businesses in dynamic and uncertain contexts.

It is expected that the research results presented in details can illustrate concrete examples of application of the main concepts: agile organization, dynamic capabilities, knowledge management, performance assessment, enterprise risk management and management by objectives.

The originality of this study is focused on the integration of conceptual triad and its application in the case study of a startup: agile organization, dynamic capabilities and knowledge management.

Discussion regarding systems that promote innovation, aptly named innovation ecosystems, has been intensifying both in academia and business. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the activity theory as a theoretical framework for conceptualising and studying innovation ecosystems. Using the activity theory, it investigates elements that affect the success and viability of innovation ecosystems formed between startups and incumbent firms, collaborating with an established firm within the context of an open innovation programme.

This study uses an exploratory case research approach and proposes the activity theory as a theoretical background to be used in innovation ecosystem research. Based on this approach, this study draws from interviews and research observations in an innovation ecosystem formed between an established firm and various startups that aim to co-develop innovative offerings.

By applying the activity theory tools, this study identifies several contradictions between interacting actors of this innovation ecosystem that can adversely affect the innovation process. Furthermore, it proposes the use of the activity theory as a fitting theoretical lens to study innovation ecosystems.

The novelty of this study is related to the focus on the incumbent–startup context for extending the innovation ecosystem literature. Using the activity theory as a viable methodological tool allows us to conceptualise firms as social constructs and hence pinpoint inner characteristics that can affect and shape their interactions and the broader ecosystem. This process is further enhanced by the use of primary data that give unique insights into the inner workings of innovation ecosystems by identifying underlying contradictions.

The purpose of this paper is to use a combination of resource-based theory and dynamic capabilities theory to explore the phenomenon of startup survival in an emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The study has a phenomenological research design, with an exploratory scope and qualitative approach. It uses in-depth interviews to identify the perceptions of ecosystem agents about the phenomenon of survival.

This paper argues that startup survival should be studied as a construct that is reflected by four conditions: break-even point, accelerated growth, cash stock and continuous operation. Furthermore, it is formed by the interaction of five mainly interacting resources: human capital, social capital, entrepreneurial capital, organizational capital and the incubation process.

The study offers a holistic model of survival that could be applicable to incipient entrepreneurial ecosystems such as the Peruvian one. This model presents survival as a reflexive-formative construct and not as a dichotomic variable (enterprise operating/enterprise closed) as has been commonly considered in the literature.

En este documento se utiliza una combinación de la teoría basada en los recursos y la teoría de las capacidades dinámicas para explorar el fenómeno de la sobrevivencia de startups en un ecosistema emprendedor incipiente.

El estudio tiene un diseño de investigación fenomenológica, con un alcance exploratorio y un enfoque cualitativo. Utiliza entrevistas en profundidad para identificar las percepciones de los agentes del ecosistema sobre el fenómeno de la sobrevivencia.

En este documento se argumenta que la sobrevivencia de los startups debe estudiarse como un constructo que se refleja en cuatro condiciones: el punto de equilibrio, el crecimiento acelerado, el stock de efectivo y la operación continua. Además, se forma por la interacción de cinco categorías de recursos organizacionales: el capital humano, el capital social, el capital emprendedor, el capital organizacional y el proceso de incubación.

El documento ofrece un modelo holístico de sobrevivencia que podría ser aplicable en ecosistemas emprendedores incipientes como el peruano. Este modelo presenta a la sobrevivencia como un constructo reflexivo-formativo y no como una variable dicotómica (empresa en actividad / empresa cerrada) como se ha considerado comúnmente en la literatura.