The failure-speed ethos: notes from a glocal startup scene

Abstract

Technology startups are integral to local and global economies, with distinctive cultural logics that shape the nature of work in this sector and the technological developments generated therein. As an emergent market, Australian technology startups offer a window into global-local dynamics and a lens on the cultural forces at play. Based on three years of ethnographic research (2019–2022), I identify prevailing values that drive and animate both culture and practice in Australia’s startup domain. Findings show the sector suffused by a paired value set: failure and speed, converged into a failure-speed ethos. Through interviews, observations, and document analysis, I delineate and illustrate the failure-speed ethos, trace its path through migration and institutional enculturation, and examine how the demands and costs of failure and speed distribute unevenly between positions within the startup ecosystem. Findings have implications for the nature of innovation work in a globalized society, the context of technological development, and the sociological processes by which culture spreads, embeds, and endures.