Innovation in Defense : characteristics of high-performing defense startups

Sammanfattning: Recently several European countries have announced massive increases in their military budgets. Innovation initiatives organized by NATO and the European Defence Fund will also be conducted over the coming decade. Studying how these resources can be deployed efficiently is crucial if these initiatives are to provide maximum benefits to European defense capabilities and the civilian sector through spillover-effects. This thesis explores what factors characterize high-performing startups in defense in order to give defense innovation initiatives an indication on how to spend their resources. The results should also be useful for aspiring entrepreneurs in defense who wish to increase their chances of creating a high-performing startup in the sector. The factors that are studied are company industry, company patents and governmental funding. These are examined in a quantitative study, followed by illustrations for the most successful companies in the dataset. It is found that the company industry for the most successful companies is surprisingly similar, with a heavy focus on software over hardware. The illustrations also highlight the need for governmental contracts in the scale-up stage of companies.