The short but interesting life of small software firms

The paper analyses the organizational transformations of small innovative firms and the influence of the entrepreneurial know how on the growth path of the firms. A sample of 32 software firms has been investigated for more than fifteen years by the research group. From the raw data the authors derived 103 different organizational profiles, resulting in seven configurations. The results of the research show complex growth paths. Most of firms are not able to sustain a competition, mainly based on technological innovation. While the firms based on an initial technical know-how shows a variety of trajectories, the firms based on an initial orientation to market are forced to renounce to the software development as the main business. Most of the surveyed firms stop to exist as small software firms. For most of them their life as software producers lasted from three to seven years.

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