Lately, the idea of the new business model named a ‘start-up’ is growing and getting more and more importance within the market. A ‘start-up’ is a company designed to grow fast. These companies are usually brand-new companies and are conceived as a partnership or temporary organisations aimed to search for a respectable and scalable business model. They became worldwide known during the dot-com bubble, when a great number of them were founded.
Strategy and innovation are key for this kind of companies so as to grow fast. This is why research and creativity are also to be taken into account. A successful ‘start-up’ needs to make sure not only that it is offering a service that lots of people need, but also to ensure they are able to reach all these people. Both objectives are very ambitious and most businesses are tightly constrained to one of them, but the most important difference successful ‘start-ups’ make is that they are not (at all).
Nowadays, lots of entrepreneurs are doing their businesses by creating virtual communities specialized in professional collectives. Then, growing fast in an increasing speedy world which changes every minute requires innovation in order to succeed. However, there are different ways to innovate: there are start-ups that are not renewing or changing their products at all, but they re-purpose their technology for a new use or open their products to a new market or location.
On the other hand, innovation is inherently risky and there may be outsized economic returns for startups that are able to harness the risk in a new way the context in which the innovation happens. Startups are designed to confront situations of extreme uncertainty.
Most of them are born and designed “digital”. They do not necessarily need to be in the technology market, though it is a reality that most of them operate on the IT sector. In that regard, the most international and well-known example of a ‘start-up’ is probably Google, which has made a statement from the very beginning and which main objective was to grow fast.
Finally, as the ‘start-ups’ are so important at the time being, there is a project in UK called Tech City, which counts on more than 1.300 ‘start-ups’ and important clients and companies interested on them such as Google, Last.fm, Microsoft or Amazon. It is developed by the Institution UKTI (UK Trade & Investment), created due the growth of the technologic cluster in the East of London. This project was built on a historic book bone of culture trade manufacturing and they look for innovation, creativity, enterprising and engaging people, and to be international.