Discovery - Fine-tuning the engine of long-term sustainable growth

Entrepreneurship is in the lifeblood of healthy economies. Indeed, one could easily argue that start-ups and scale-ups are very much embedded in the DNA of the most thriving economies. What then of the Netherlands? Does it provide an environment in which entrepreneurial thinking and the growth of new businesses are considered integral to the economic corpus? Does the Netherlands have entrepreneurship in its DNA?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is both yes and no. On the one hand, the Scaleup Dashboard 2020, developed and published by the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (ECE), shows that the resilience of the Dutch economy has declined, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the number of fast-growing companies – scale-ups – has stagnated. At the same time, while start-ups can grow rapidly, around two-thirds lose their growth momentum.

On the other hand – the positive one – scale-ups in the Netherlands are responsible for the creation of some 232,560 full-time jobs in the period 2016-2019. There are reasons to be cheerful!

However, as ECE managing director, Martin Luxemburg, says in the Scaleup Dashboard: “The scale-up climate in the Netherlands requires constant attention. Scale-ups are the engine of the economy; they are responsible for most of the job creation, which is needed now more than ever. Not only nationally, but also regionally and locally.”

Contents:

• Techleap - The scale-up ecosystem in the Netherlands
• YoungCapital - Scaling up with a winning culture
• Wehkamp - Scaling up with data and speed
• Just Eat Takeaway.com - Using a scale­­­­­­­-up mindset from the start
• Can Picnic crack the online grocery code?
• Searching for the missing link in sustainability and entrepreneurship

RSM Discovery is a gateway magazine for business leaders to access fresh management research from RSM faculty members, aiming to bridge academic management research and the practical business practices necessary for executive management in industry. Each quarterly issue provides a short summary, typically two pages, translating a selection of impactful research publications from academic papers to practical business articles for senior executives. Previously known as RSM Insight, the magazine has been renamed RSM Discovery. It combines challenging articles with videos and interviews.