Management Research Review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discover factors of new ventures performance in Russia and to combine them in a model which describes the influence of these factors on the performance of a new venture.

Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional study of new ventures was conducted by a field survey in six regions in Russia. One-factor variance analysis and regression analysis were used to identify significant factors.

Findings – Three groups of factors were identified as significantly influencing performance of new ventures in Russia: environmental factors, style of management and type of strategic behaviour. For environmental factors the following variables were included: crisis in industry, increase in product demand, predictability of regulatory authorities behaviour, predictability of financial markets, and environmental hostility. For company management style, several variables were statistically significant: level of centralization, concentration of management in the hands of the founder, and role of the middle management. For strategic behaviour, only the strategy of prospector in terms of Miles and Snow was found to have significant influence on the new venture performance (NVP).

Research limitations/implications – The research ignores industry specifics that may be reflected in different new ventures performance factors.

Practical implications – Entrepreneurs starting new ventures in Russia should take into account the identified factors which can influence their companies’ performance.

Originality/value – Although there have been many studies on NVP factors, no such research has been performed in Russia.