Overview of the factors that influence the competitiveness of startups: a systematized literature review

Abstract

This research presents a systematized literature review to identify the main critical success factors (CSFs) that influence startups’ competitiveness. Considering that aspects related to competitiveness should be the target of organizations, especially early-stage companies, this paper identifies a broad of factors regarding startups’ competitiveness. A total of 36 articles were selected in Scopus and Web of Science databases and an in-depth bibliometric analysis of the corpus was performed using the VOSviewer software. 25 CSFs that influence startups’ competitiveness were identified and categorized into three fundamental points of view (FPVs), namely: organizational, human, and environmental. Organizational FPV covers factors that define the internal characteristics of startups. Human FPV, in turn, consists of characteristics of human capital, while the Environmental FPV refers to external factors and the startup context. This work could help practitioners and policymakers by enlightening them about startups’ competitiveness and the elements involved therein, along with providing them with a robust conceptual framework.