Successful startups – A matter of the right location?

New book Startup Cities explains the success and failure of cities in nurturing startups, and provides advice on how to boost regional startup activity

New York | Heidelberg, 13 March 2018

Why do only a few cities dominate the global startup scene? How can startup activity be boosted in other locations? A new book now explains the factors that determine local startup success through a model based on a detailed comparison of regional startup cities. 

Startup Cities provides strategies to key stakeholders on how to build an inspiring environment to support startup growth. Author Peter S. Cohan presents detailed case studies of what helps or hinders startup activity. By pairing the more and less successful cities within regions, and including insights and implications from case studies, he presents practical advice and strategies that local policymakers, city leaders, entrepreneurs university administrators and capital providers can apply to boost regional startup activity.

“Location matters to startups because the people who provide them with the resources they need to grow—revenues, talent, capital, advice—are more than producers of code or PowerPoint decks,” says Cohan. “Pick the right place and the startup gets the resources that it needs to grow. Pick the wrong location to run the company and it withers in the struggle to get those resources.”

Peter S. Cohan is a lecturer of Strategy at Babson College and one of the world’s leading authorities on regional startup ecosystems. Starting in 2012, he created and led Startup Strategy courses that explore four regional startup ecosystems—Hong Kong/Singapore, Israel, Paris, and Spain/Portugal. His courses are based on an original framework for evaluating why a few cities host most startup creation and the rest fail to do so. In running these courses, Cohan has built a network of local policymakers, investors, entrepreneurs, and professors from which he draws practical insights for what distinguishes successful Startup Commons from their peers.

Peter S. Cohan
Startup Cities
Why Only a Few Cities Dominate the Global Startup Scene and What the Rest Should Do About It
2018, 271 p. 10 illus. in color
Softcover $ 29.99 | £ 19,99 | 24,99 €
ISBN 978-1-4842-3392-4
Also available as an eBook