The long term sustainability and longevity of the business life cycle depends on correct understanding of the contextual constituents, triggers and dynamics, pre-startup planning, strategy and financial forecasting where business plans are developed to understand and forecast project viability, pitch ideas and secure funding. At the same time there is a lack of one page startup business model. Identifying this need, a ‘startup business strategy frame’ has been developed through learnings and encompassing design thinking, the business canvas and other strategy models and approaches. It provides a logical sequential flow and connects value drivers on environmental, strategic including operational and financial levels of proposed startup in a sequential format. To arrive at the frame as a logical conclusion a website www.strategizestartup.com is developed to build startup business model and plans in a time and cost effective process. The website assists the startups at each stage through a work and guidebook. The website takes the user from creative ideation by charting the context to build the strategy and measuring the financial impact. This startup strategy model will alleviate the problems for the first and second stage entrepreneurs to ideate creatively and strategizing. It also eradicates the issues related to reading and understanding long plans which could be an exhaustive and cumbersome process.

When existing at emulsion interface and continuous phase, dispersibility of water-soluble flexible polymer chains has obvious effect on rheology and dielectric properties of whole emulsion. CNF Pickering emulsion is a good system to research these properties with respect to their microscopic phase structure, dielectric and rheological properties by using cellulose nanofibers (CNF) as water-soluble Pickering emulsifier, liquid Paraffin as oil phase and DDAB as a cationic auxiliary surfactant. The CNF- and DDAB-contents were systematically varied while the water to paraffin oil ratio remained constant to discern the influence of the Pickering emulsifiers. Polarized optical microscopic images revealed that the droplets have tendency to become smaller size for higher CNF content, but bigger size for higher DDAB content, which was proved by the fluorescent analysis for CNF dispersibility with varying DDAB content. The dielectric damping exhibits a minimum, whose value decreases with increasing DDAB- and CNF-content. Increasing the DDAB-content promotes solubilization of CNFs in the aqueous phase and will increase the overall viscosity and yield points. Similarly, a higher CNF-content leads to a higher viscosity and yield point, but at high DDAB-contents the viscosity function exhibits an S-shape at intermediate CNF-content. To evaluate the results further they were compared with CNF-dispersions (without oil-phase), which showed a surfactant effect slightly on maximum stress but strongly on yield stress τy, indicating DDAB can promote the formation of CNF network rather than the viscosity of whole system.

Purpose: There is limited research on the reasons behind startup failure, and none of the available studies use a competency approach. In this study we applied Spencer’s competency model to identify the competencies in startups which, according to their CEOs, contributed to failure. Methodology: Three coders analyzed the stories of 50 startup failures published online using modified Critical Incident Technique. Findings: Two salient competencies were identified playing a fundamental role in startup failures if missing: Information seeking and Customer service orientation. A network pattern of 9 more prevalent competency deficits was created: Technical/professional/managerial expertise, Analytical thinking, Flexibility, Self-control, Concern for order, quality and accuracy, Interpersonal understanding, Self-confidence, Team leadership and Teamwork and cooperation. Besides startup-specific behavior descriptions were added to Spencer’s competencies. Research implications: Competency approach and Critical Incident Technique method proved to be feasible to identify competency deficits in failed startups. Practical implications: The identified competency deficits offer relevant focus areas for the assessment and development of startup teams. Originality: The study provided research evidence to describe the competency deficits of startup teams that are connected to their failure.

The main goal of the study is to assess the Decision criteria, and the determining factor for the sustainability of entrepreneurial startups in order to contribute towards social inclusion and capacity building. Both concepts are in the development phase and are the outcome of entrepreneurial ecosystem and individual behavior and traits. The current study observed the research problem as entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial startups are the continuous phenomena required for every economy. The lack of an efficient ecosystem and incompetent trait of an entrepreneur drags the entrepreneurial startup to a failure. Therefore, an assessment on decision criteria and determining factors categorizing them with their importance may provide requisites to lead a successful entrepreneurial startup contributing to the social inclusion and capacity building. The study solved the research problem by statistical assessment of decision criteria and determining factors and categorizing them with their importance may provide requisites to lead a successful entrepreneurial startup. The research is built on research questions, objectives, conceptual model, and hypothesis which are tested based on the data collected. The collection of data was done through a survey questionnaire on a sample of established entrepreneurs. The study concludes that five components of decision criteria are Region, Competition, Funding Opportunities, Tax System, and Country Economic Situation, whereas the eight components Consciousness and Reliable, Pursuit Results, Flexibility, Stress Resistance, Skills Identification Exploitation Potential Market Opportunities, Leadership, Creativity and Innovation, and Delegation Decision Making of determining factor are required for a successful entrepreneurial startup to be able to work towards social inclusion and capacity building.