12 January, 2022

The kick-off meeting for the Hincks Centre’s newest international project took place online on Wednesday the 12th of January - a great start to the New Year!

Partners from the Centria University of Applied Sciences, Kokkola, Finland joined the Lead Partner, Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence to discuss the first steps in delivering an improved support system tailored for start-ups and existing SMEs in remote and sparsely populated areas.

The project, Success for SMEs and Start-ups Through Better Decision Making (SSDM), is focused on demonstrating and supporting the implementation of a scientific approach to decision making among start-ups. It will test the feasibility of providing an innovative Structured Scientific Support Programme (SSSP) to support agencies in order to improve the decision-making of start-ups, SMEs, and spin-offs to companies particularly concerned with the circular economy.

In March 2021, the Hincks Centre hosted a guest webinar* delivered by Arnaldo Camuffo, the principal investigator for a Randomised Controlled Trial of 116 start-ups assessing this novel approach. Although the approach has some overlap with Lean, it has more focus on theory and hypothesis creation early in the process. So far, 4 randomised controlled trials show that companies using this approach abandon ideas quicker, pivot more deliberately and, on average, have more revenue and employees in the year after the programme in comparison to those using typical start up programmes. 

We believe this approach has the strongest evidence of efficacy - improving on entrepreneurial outcomes currently available.

The 6 month project is funded by the Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund.

* The full recording of the webinar, 'Increasing Start-Up Success by Focusing on Entrepreneurial Decision Making', can be viewed by clicking here.