The establishment and growth of a high technology firm: Interim results from an exploratory longitudinal case study

Entrepreneurs create companies, employment and are often in the vanguard of new technology developments and applications they are the Schumpeterian agents of creative destruction. This is a widely recognised reality which underpins national and regional policies to create the conditions necessary to encourage and sustain entrepreneurial start-up companies. It is therefore surprising that there is a dearth of research into entrepreneurship within a construction industry context given the high company formation rate in most national construction sectors. This deficiency is further accentuated by the lack of understanding of entrepreneurship in high technology domains in an era when we seek new technologies to improve the environmental and whole lifecycle performance of buildings. This paper reports on an ongoing Construction Knowledge Exchange funded project which is tracking, real time, the start-up and growth of a company which is developing and introducing a range of leading edge light emitting diode technologies. Interim results will be presented on the interplay between business environment conditions and the complex emergence of the company: from the original motivation of the founders of the firm, to its growth strategy and organisational design and its business development and marketing strategy.