An Ear to the Ground: The Role of the Voice of The Consumer in Firm Survival for Startups

Abstract

Many high tech knowledge intensive entrepreneurial firms tend to focus on their technological capabilities and to develop products that are typically taken to the market using a “push” strategy. In doing so, the firm and its downstream value-chain members push their technology into the marketplace with scarcely a thought of the consumer until after the product is in the hands of the user. The need to bring the consumer’s voice into the startup firm and the business planning process has seldom been discussed. There is however, much debate about the role of business planning and new venture creation and success. Here, we extend this debate and advance our understanding of business planning. Specifically, we investigate the impact of incorporating the “voice-of-the-consumer” (VOC) into business planning as it affects firm survival using longitudinal data from a sample of incubated spin off firms.