Could the future of entrepreneurship lie not with inspired individuals working single-mindedly on a pet project but with start-up factories using a repeatable, scalable process to build and launch multiple businesses concurrently?
According to a new study by the University of East Anglia (UEA), there are now more than 1,000 so called ‘venture studios’ operating worldwide and their number is growing by 18% each year. Rather than focusing on a single start- up, these organisations generate ideas, recruit founders, develop products and bring multiple new companies to market across diverse business sectors. Some venture studios analysed for the report are working on as many as 15 start-ups at a time.
The average number of new businesses created by the companies surveyed was 10, but some have already set up as many as 120. Dr Davide Viglialoro, from UEA’s Norwich Business School, believes venture studios could play an increasingly important role in how companies are created, funded and scaled.
He said: “Entrepreneurship is often viewed as something driven by individual founders working on a single idea. What we found is the emergence of organisations specifically designed to create multiple companies in a systematic and repeatable way.
“Venture studios are taking the lessons learned from previous start- ups and embedding them into their organisations through shared teams, playbooks and structured processes. This means every new venture starts with a higher level of knowledge and experience.”
Unlike incubators, accelerators, venture capital firms or angel investor groups, venture studios are directly involved in creating companies and often retain ownership stakes in the businesses they develop. They typically follow a common business creation process, moving from idea generation and market testing through to team formation, product development, launch and eventual sale or handover.
Dr Viglialoro said: “Venture studios are emerging as a new organisational model for innovation and venture creation. Their ability to combine experienced founders, specialist teams and structured learning processes allows them to repeatedly generate and test new business opportunities. This has important implications for entrepreneurs, investors, universities and policymakers.” The paper, Institutionalizing portfolio entrepreneurship: the Venture Studio model, is published in the journal Technovation.
