Management and leadership challenges in achieving success by technology start-ups: A phenomenological study

The qualitative phenomenological study addressed the problem of high failure rate of technology start-ups. The specific problem is the lack of understanding about the reasons of the continuing underachievement in project success that leads to the failure of technology start-ups. The study involved an exploration into the experiences of 22 project managers and organizational leaders who had lived experience in project management within successful start-ups from Silicon Valley, California. The study utilized semistructured in-depth interviews to collect the data. Data were managed with NVivo 8.0 software and analyzed using Moustakas's modification of the van Kaam method of analysis. The findings indicate project management related strategies such as daily knowledge-sharing, problem-sharing, and status-checking meetings could achieve success of projects. The findings also indicate reporting strategies such as sending project reports to self-team and cross-functional teams, and hiring strategies such as manager's previous start-up experience could achieve success of projects, which in turn achieves success of technology start-ups. The findings reveal patenting strategies, outsourcing, and product strategies such as concurrent multiproducts could achieve success of technology start-ups. The implications to leadership included the emergence of transactional and transformational leadership as the most important success factors to achieve success. Recommendations from the study could help start-up's organizational leaders to overcome the risks and achieve success. An improved success rate for start-ups might retain existing jobs, inspire venture capitalists to invest in more start-ups; entrepreneurs to incept new start-ups and ultimately contribute more to economic growth and society through creation of jobs and innovations.