Research in Progress: Organizing Startups’ Growth

ODC WEBINAR

Research in Progress: Organizing Startups’ Growth

Thursday, March 26, 2026 at 9am EST/2pm CET

In this ODC “Research in Progress” (RiP) webinar, organized and moderated by Franciso Brahm (London Business School), two PhD students - Abhishek Bhatia (London Business School) and Constantin Prox (INSEAD) working on research at the intersection of organization design and entrepreneurship - present their working papers on how to organize startups’ growth (each about 20 mins). The presentations will be followed by a commentary by Oliver Alexy (Technical University of Munich). The webinar will end with feedback/comments from the audience. Please see below for the abstracts of the papers and the bios of the participants.

Francisco Brahm [organizer and moderator]

Bio: Francisco Brahm is Assistant Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School. His research sets out to understand two aspects of organizations. First, their nature: the forces that explain their origin as well as their function for agents and economies at large. Second, their formal structure (for example, firm boundaries, delegation, and incentive systems), the informal forces within firms (for instance, cooperation, norms, organizational culture), and how these two interact. His research has been published in Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, among other outlets. He was Chief Financial Officer and a consultant before academia, and continues to actively work with companies to tackle managerial challenges.

Abhishek Bhatia [presenter]

Title: Data-driven (Blitz-)Scaling

Abstract: Fast scaling presents a vexing puzzle: while it can confer competitive market and resource positions, it frequently results in failure. This study examines how some startups successfully navigate frictions in fast scaling through their organizational design choices. Conceptualizing scaling as a capability development process grounded in learning from customers, the paper offers three nuanced insights into how scaling speed shapes firm performance. First, ‘organizational learning’ is doubly constrained with speed – both by reduced time for deep customer analysis (lower depth) and increased attention demands from heterogeneous customer feedback (higher breadth). These constraints present a ‘dual retention challenge’: fast-scaling firms struggle to retain both customers (due to poor customer understanding) and employees (due to hiring and matching mistakes under time pressure). Second, the customer breadth encountered with speed presents a critical organizational design trade-off. Firms can improve customer retention by adopting a broad task scope – expanding the range of capabilities to address heterogeneous preferences; however, rapidly broadening the task scope exacerbates the employee retention challenge by further increasing coordination complexities and matching mistakes. Third, fast-scaling firms can alternatively respond to customer breadth through data-driven tools that enhance ‘statistical learning’ from customers. Data-driven analytics can enhance both customer and employee retention by enabling more informed decisions regarding resource allocation, mitigating unwanted expansion in task scope breadth. Thus, data-driven capabilities not only resolve the ‘dual retention challenge’ but also do so in a manner that mitigates the trade-off introduced by broad task scope. The paper provides empirical support using novel monthly data on customer and employee flows across over 300 Marketing Automation Software-as-a-Service scaleups, leveraging exogenous variation in customer acquisition speed from European GDPR implementation in 2018 for causal identification.

Bio: Abhishek Bhatia is a PhD Candidate at London Business School. He will join Copenhagen Business School as an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Innovation in the summer of 2026. Abhishek’s research interests span entrepreneurial strategy for scaling. His dissertation examines the effectiveness of scaling strategies simultaneously along two dimensions – external product market and internal organization. In addition, he is also interested in examining the impact of data-driven technologies, such as AI, on organizational growth and resilience. Abhishek’s dissertation research has been recognized by the Strategy Research Foundation and has been nominated for several best paper awards, such as the Steven Klepper Young Scholar award and the Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings. His research has been published in leading academic and practitioner-oriented journals such as Production & Operations Management Journal and California Management Review Insights.

Constantin Prox [presenter]

Title: Growing by Dividing and Startup Performance 

Abstract: When is an increase in organizational size beneficial? In response to recent disagreements on the benefits of early startup growth, this paper constructs and tests a theory of how the addition of employees to a growing organization impacts the organization’s performance. It proposes different effects by whether the new employee increases the functional division of labor. Analyzing a large sample of startups selling internet technologies, distinctive performance patterns are found for hires used to establish new activities (divisional growth) versus hires used to provide capacity in existing activities (non-divisional growth). In this sample, early divisional growth is linked to significant performance benefits, while early non-divisional growth is linked to a higher chance of failure. Mechanism tests show evidence that early divisional growth aids process development, setting the stage for a successful growth trajectory.

Bio: Constantin Prox is a PhD Candidate at INSEAD, joining SKEMA Business School in Paris as an Assistant Professor. His research explores firm growth, primarily in the context of scaling entrepreneurial ventures. His dissertation examines how startups build their sales organizations, describes how growth multiplies organizational complexity, and estimates the effects of capital availability on startup growth and failure. His research has been awarded the Best PhD Paper Prize as well as the Best Corporate Strategy Proposal from the Strategic Management Society.

Oliver Alexy [discussant]

Bio: Oliver Alexy is Professor of Innovation and Organization Design at TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Germany. Oliver studies how to design organizations that effectively deal with extreme uncertainty. His recent interests mainly revolve around questions of how collaboration, knowledge disclosure, or framing strategies may help uncertainty-facing organizations become more legitimate or more innovative, grow or reestablish themselves, or build or commandeer innovation ecosystems. Oliver’s work has been published in leading academic and practitioner-oriented outlets, such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal, as well as Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Sloan Management Review, and McKinsey Quarterly. Currently, he is a co-editor of Strategic Organization and sits on the editorial review board of several management journals.

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