Substudy 20: Startup and Growth of Businesses

The creation of new companies is often seen as a motor for economic growth, on the belief that these startups are the carriers of innovation and developers of new products. In actual fact, startups and SMEs are today of greater importance than they were 30 years ago. In Austria, the number of companies is growing in the long term; every year, new firms are added to the extent of about 10 percent of the existing stock. The new additions make up some 35 percent of new jobs, employing about 3.5 percent of the dependently employed workforce. The rise in startups has been accompanied by a rise in those closing down. The creation of new jobs does not concentrate on new startups but, to a large extent, on a handful of growth-focused companies, usually of medium size. The study develops proposals for creating a framework that is crucial for growth-oriented startups and innovation-based growth.