Stimulation of Dutch startups in the Aerospace

Stimulation of Dutch startups in the Aerospace: A comparative case study on the barriers that dutch startups will face entering the aerospace market and how they can be overcome

van Wirdum, Kelly (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)

Scholten, V.E. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Management of Technology (MoT)

2017-12-12

The aerospace industry may seem a very innovative and renewing sector. However, when looking at the evolution of the aeroplane, it is clear that no radical innovation has taken place the last 70 years. It is not surprising considering the domination of the industry by big, traditional companies, who are known to be slow innovators. The most important source of innovation are startups, and these are lacking in the aerospace industry. The many barriers of the aerospace industry make the industry unattractive for startups. The research objective is: How can startup companies be stimulated to enter the aerospace industry, an industry dominated by big, traditional, companies? To develop a theory on how to make the aerospace industry more attractive for startups detection of the barriers and solutions is needed. Factors that do have a positive influence on the entrance of startups in the aerospace industry are support programmes and the self efficacy of the entrepreneur. A literature study on success factors and barriers that startups have faced in comparable industries led to a long list of potential barriers. To determine which of these barriers apply to the aerospace, a case study on six Dutch startups in the aerospace industry is conducted. By using semi-structured interviews barriers are acknowledges, along with the severity of the barrier, the link with support activities and the level of self efficacy of the founders. There were four barriers that were perceived by all six cases. The first one lack in financial strength, a barrier that every industry faces but the aerospace even more because of their capital intense product, strict regulation, and slow industry. Support programmes can increase the financial strength with funds. The second barrier is the network density, having a dense network is absolutely crucial in the aerospace industry. Support programmes often have partners or can offer their own network to their startups as support. The third barrier are the strict regulations of the aerospace industry and the certification. This is a very time and money consuming barrier, incubators do not offer support with certification The best support for this barrier would be a collaboration with a large company, who can help and offer testing facilities free of charge. the last barrier is the slowness of the industry, unfortunately there is no support activity that can help with this barrier. Striking was that the level of entrepreneurial self efficacy did not seem to influence the type and severity of the perceived barriers. It did seem to influence what support activities are important. The higher the level of self efficacy the less need for support activities. Some important findings were that the cases did not experience the power of the large companies as a barrier and that the cases were not looking for collaborations to overcome barriers, an easier way to overcome barriers is to form a collaboration with a large company that has all the right resources and network. For any further research, the number of cases can be extended. For example adding cases that did fail, cases that are not part of a support programme. The results of this study can contribute to practical matters by startups, interesting in entering the aerospace industry, and support programmes, wanting to improve their support activities.

Entrepreneurship
Aerospace
Startups
Self efficacy

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0bb56c81-e923-4598-a13b-f2461d60f5ce

Student theses

master thesis

© 2017 Kelly van Wirdum