92% of starts-up fail within 3 years. So what differentiates the 8% that succeed?

There are plenty of books out there with anecdotal evidence – people telling their success stories – but what works well for one business, doesn’t necessarily work for another.

There has to be a reason why some start-ups succeed when a vast majority fail. Even larger companies that wish to diversify or introduce new products or services don’t always get it right in spite of the experience and resources that they possess.

Until recently, there has been little research and analysis done on how companies actually grow or scale, and the key factors which affect this growth journey.

The Triple Chasm Model (TCM) is a unique new approach to manage the growth challenge that is underpinned by several decades of experience in starting, scaling up and growing businesses. TCM is based on the results of of a 5-year global research programme which, for the first time, systematically explored how companies scale and the factors that matter on this growth journey.

TCM utilizes three key insights from this research to help entrepreneurs and management teams address their growth challenge:

• Scale-up is a continuous process with varying timeframes based on market spaces and ecosystems and it is important for companies to understand the typical time-frames to establish themselves in the market.
• Companies need to understand where exactly they are in this continuous process, because the things that they need to worry about change with maturity. This helps them to understand what is really important for their businesses right now.
• There are 12 key dimensions or factors which govern the way in which a company grows. Establishing the relative importance of these factors should enable companies to decide where to focus their energies as they grow their businesses.

A detailed overview of the Triple Chasm Model is available as a  white paper here.