Large corporations often desire to shed their bureaucratic structures and embrace the lean hierarchies at start-ups. Such an agile structure is desired in order to embrace innovations and act on them suitably. Rarely do organizations manage this, but when they do, it is usually the result of two factors- clarity and focus. Clarity implies a deep understanding of the company mission along with capabilities they all have in order to execute the same. Focus refers to a bold corporate strategy with design initiatives to tackle any failures. A “minimum viable product” is created as a basic prototype which keeps getting improvised depending on the business intelligence received from customer data. At Bain, small teams are created which work on intricate issues, though staying away from micro-management. A lot of leaders are uncomfortable in breaking away from these age-old practices which were in the first place created to leverage advantages of scale economies. But proper coaching and mentoring can rectify this issue to quite an extent.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/11/figure-out-your-companys-make-or-break-strategic-problems-then-use-small-teams-to-solve-them?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Uploaded Date:21 November 2017

Back in 2006, India’s start-up scene was next to barren with unicorns such as Flipkart yet to be created. Top investment firms such as Tiger Global or Soft Bank were unheard of. Instead, investing on start-ups was a more informal, family-oriented vocation where generous donors would agree over dinner to lend. That is when the Indian Angel Network (IAN) was created, leveraging the need for formal fund support to start-ups. At this point, there exist more than four-hundred and fifty investors from across eleven nations. In stark contrast to Venture Capitalists (VC), these Angel Investors were ready to invest in small quantities as well. VCs’ complaint was that there was a lot of money, but too few potential companies to be fed that to. Today major contributors to IAN includes the heads of Google India, Infosys and Everest Flavors. Among the top start-ups backed by the IAN includes Pretty Secrets, Uniphore and data warehousing firm Druva Software. IAN now also invests offshore in the UK and Israel.

Source:https://qz.com/1109082/indian-angel-network-ian-the-pioneers-of-indian-angel-investing-are-now-getting-into-the-venture-capital-game/

Uploaded Date:15 November 2017

The Internet of Things (IoT) and several other modern trends have fuelled this concept for co-economy, co-innovation and co-development. Yet very few firms are actively creating new things together. This is true for both startups as well as established large firms. This could be due to differences in working style or due to being unable to fully understand each other though seemingly there is no dearth in valuing each other. Firms working on IoT especially require collaborative assistance as the skills required for the different tasks are wildly different. Skills are required in disparate fields such as Big Data, sensor technology, networking and business analytics. In order to foster successful collaboration, certain steps must be followed such as the alignment with each other’s business goals and values. Startups must ensure that too much of their resources are not used up over disparate set of functions. Studies have suggested that startups must avoid working on thought leadership or sales innovation projects with large vendors. Similarly, they must avoid advanced research with large sized customers. Some leeway must be given for cultural clashes. Startups must use collaboration with large corporations as a way to scale up. The start may be small, but a long-term collaboration must be agreed upon.

Source:https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298438

Uploaded Date:16 August 2017

There could be several reasons behind the eventual failures of even successful start-ups. A commonly cited such reason is having a static business model, without the managerial capacity to move on with the times. Another is having limited reserves to buttress economic shocks and downward cycles. Conversely, an inability to scale up during successful periods can prove to be equally harmful. Proactive investment must be done to foresee such trends such as by upgrading infrastructure or IT networks. Having the wrong people in the board of directors can be a recipe to failure. Sometimes in order to succeed at talent recruitment, not possessing the brand name of bigger companies, start-ups are coerced to overcompensate. This must be avoided at all costs. At times, the leader gets outgrown by the company itself leading to an abyss at the very top. Start-ups must also avoid getting too dependent on any one customer or segment believing this would last forever.

Source:http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/06/25/top-7-reasons-your-successful-startup-will-fail/

Uploaded Date:05/07/2017