I met Slovenian entrepreneur, Sandi Cesko, in 2007 when his Ljubljana-based multi-channel retail operation, Studio Moderna, had about $70 million in sales. Not bad. I met him again two months ago: six years later he had scaled up by a factor of ten — all the result of organic growth — and employs over 6000 people. Even better.
Scale-up means growth, and growth means jobs, wealth, and tax revenues. In a recent post on HBR.org, I called attention to the fact that we entrepreneurship promoters are too focused on start-up, and need to re-balance the dialog to support scale-up as well. That dialog includes all stakeholders, from the entrepreneurs themselves to investors to government policymakers. For you entrepreneurs, the challenges of scale-up are first and foremost the responsibility of managements and boards. Don't go looking to public officials for help in growing your venture ten times bigger. But you policymakers can still play a key role in fostering an entrepreneurship ecosystem that supports scale-up entrepreneurs. So here are some suggestions, most of which by the way, happen to be essentially cost-free:
