In his original work of the Survival Index Value (SIV®) model, Dr. Adli Abouzeedan proposed a new parameter, which he named as the Survival Index (SI) (see Abouzeedan, 2001; Abouzeedan and Busler, 2002a). The new parameter is used to evaluate the performance of Small and Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs) utilizing firm survivability as an indicator. The SI is calculated using an equation known as Survival Index (SI) Value Equation or SIE. In this paper, we applied the SIV® model to run an analysis on a very young Swedish firm and up to our knowledge, for the first time. The firm is a small one, working within a business sector defined as "fish preparation industry". This particular enterprise had a bad performance through its short life. The purpose of this study is to truly determine if the SIV® model has the capacity to indicate the performance of the firm. The case study presented in this work showed the valuable analytical power of the new model since it succeeded in giving a clear indication of the worsening situation of the enterprise. During the SIV® analysis of this Swedish firm new concepts have been introduced which do increase the practicality and analytical capacity of the model.
Several sources have emphasized the importance of the entrepreneurial economy, and the role venture capitalists (VCs) plays as financiers. VCs are often actively and personally involved in their portfolio companies, but the cost of governance is high and they therefore have to select when to be active participants. Four different risks are identified in this paper: agency risk, business and market risk, coalition risk, and conformity risk. Weak support is found for the categories of agency and business and market risk. The data speak in favor of VCs getting more involved when the portfolio companies experience some kind of trouble. Their activity level increases when the portfolio companies have an inexperienced CEO, when the companies are in an early stage of their development, are young, have a weak board of directors, and/or a weak performance.
The founding and early development of a firm are crucial events. Despite this fact, most research is aimed at problems existing in firms that are established and have passed the early development. Consequently, knowledge of the early development process in a business firm is limited, particularly where technology-based firms are concerned.
The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the early development processes of technology-based firms. The research questions are: What aspects are important in the early development of a technology-based firm? Are some of these aspects more difficult to develop than others and, if so, why? A case study approach is used. Three technology-based firms have over a period of five years been studied in detail, using interviews and sources such as minutes of board meetings, business and market plans and other documents.
From a review of the literature, eight essential aspects (business idea, product, market, organization, expertise, prime mover, customer relations and other corporate relations) of the early development have been chosen. The results show that the degree of difficulty to develop the aspects vary. A particularly difficult aspect is to define the market.
Like many other countries, Sweden is putting a lot of effort into the development of effective support for small firms. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of programmes intended to increase the number and quality of start-ups and to improve their chances of survival and further growth. In the development of support programmes, it is important to be aware of potential barriers on the demand side (the perceived benefit of taking part in programmes) as well as on the supply side (the support organisation’s ability to develop satisfactory programmes). This paper presents the preliminary results of a survey of 158 technology-based firms in and around Linköping, Sweden. The focus of this research was to study the dynamics of the firm’s participation in the support programmes. The firm’s attitude towards support programmes, how the gap between demand and supply occurs, as well as, how this gap could be bridged to achieve effective support activities was studied. The results showed that the supply-demand gap became apparent when the firm’s situation was compared to its participation in various programmes. The implications of the study are that the support organisations should be focused on the firms’ real needs, that they should facilitate communication between their organisation and the small firm sector and should secure a supply of good programme managers.