Policies for Scaling Up Technology-Based Firms

This study focuses on the scale up issue, which is crucial for numerous countries. The reason for policies in firms that want and have the opportunity to scale up their business is that these firms have a large potential to create job opportunities and economic development compared to investment in startups without any growth ambitions. The overall objective is therefore to study policies to facilitate technology-based firms’ scaling up. As a consequence of earlier research on high-growth firms, little attention has been paid to surviving and stable firms that may want to scale up. This study design comprises three main empirical areas: financial support, framework conditions and innovation systems. The first contribution of this study is that it is an empirical description of policies at the country level to support technology-based firms. The study also develops a conceptual model for evaluating policies to promote technology-based firms. The model consists of three dimensions: perspectives/actors, analysis, and evaluation. The results provide insights into (i) how policymakers can better examine crucial links between the scaleup populations and demand side policies and (ii) how policymakers can better comprehend the linkages between the three dimensions to evaluate policies.