Predictive factors of the transformation of Andalusian companies into scale ups

Policy makers often think that creating more start-up companies will transform depressed economic regions, generate innovation, and create jobs. However, in the last decade, this belief has been flawed because the typical start-ups are not innovative, create few jobs, and generates little wealth (Shane 2009). Because of that, policy makers are increasingly focusing on the so-called scale-ups, i.e., start-ups that have experienced growth over 20% for at least three consecutive years (Eurostat 2016). For instances, the European Commission, in its strategy Europe 2020, specifically mentions that one of its objectives is to create the conditions for high growth SMEs to lead emerging markets and to stimulate ICT innovation across all business sectors (European Commission, 2010). Consequently, public funding is beginning to be balanced between that allocated to enhance start-ups and that aimed to stimulate the transformation of newly created or consolidated companies into scale ups. The problem is that high-growth companies are very difficult to pick out ahead of time (Shane 2009). Several studies have been carried out to identify the factors that affect the likelihood that a company will enter on the path of rapid growth but these factors change from one region to another, because cross-country differences in economic performance affect them. Thus, the objective of our research has been to identify these factors in the Andalusian companies, in order to predict in advance the chances of a company to transform into a scale-up.