From David to Goliath : investigating the lack of global success for Norwegian IT start-ups

Abstract

Norway scores very high on various parameters that contribute to the competitiveness in the Information Technology industry. However it has not produced many large global information technology firms, in particular, software firms. When the researchers started researching on the Norwegian IT industry, there was a clear pattern that could be identified. The pattern here was that Norwegian firms get acquired by foreign multinational corporations just when they reach a growth stage from where they could have been grown much bigger. The researchers decided to find the root cause to this pattern through this research and also used interviews for their research. The researchers got to meet and interview some very interesting people from the software industry and the start-up eco-system. Secondary data was acquired from Orbis and Zephus databases for financial data on Norway and Sweden. The researchers analysed all the data that was gathered and came up with an interesting analysis with some recommendations to remove the obstacles to the growth of Norwegian IT firms.