Abstract
It is commonly claimed that the initial stages of any startup business are dominated by continuous, extended uncertainty, in an environment that has even been described as chaotic. Consequently, decisions are made in uncertain circumstances, so making the right decision is crucial to successful business. However, little currently exists in the way of empirical studies into this supposed uncertainty. In this paper, we study decision-making in early-stage software startups by means of a single, in-depth case study. Based on our data, we argue that software startups do not work in a chaotic environment, nor are they characterized by unique uncertainty unlike that experienced by other firms.
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E.g., https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10669492 (“More than 10 000 open programmer positions, but no one to fill them”).
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Kemell, KK., Ventilä, E., Kettunen, P., Mikkonen, T. (2019). Amidst Uncertainty – or Not? Decision-Making in Early-Stage Software Startups. In: Hyrynsalmi, S., Suoranta, M., Nguyen-Duc, A., Tyrväinen, P., Abrahamsson, P. (eds) Software Business. ICSOB 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 370. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33742-1_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33742-1_29
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