Luck is an important component of entrepreneurial success but proper management can help to best guide the process, research from the UCL School of Management reveals.

In a study of Chinese Internet Video companies published in Industrial and Corporate Change, Professor Kenny Ching showed that the most successful ones “accidentally” inherited winning features from prior failed business models. He termed this process “exaptation”, a concept borrowed from evolutionary biology.

“The main reason certain video companies in China have been so successful, is because they accidentally inherited capabilities to generate user generated content which included making long- form user created videos- something which Instagram is now trying to do. 

“These capabilities were not originally intended for this current use, yet they became critical to the companies’ eventual success.”, Says Ching.

Professor Ching created a study of YouTube clones in the parallel Chinese Internet industry, documenting the business model changes and decisions made by more than 150 entrepreneurs as they sought to dominate the Internet Video industry.

The researchers suggest that entrepreneurs should strive to maintain multi-purposed assets as they can be repositioned as business conditions change.  These include user communities and general purposed technological assets.

For more information, a copy of the paper, or to speak to Professor Kenny Ching, contact Kate Mowbray at BlueSky PR on kate@bluesky-pr.com or call +44 (0)1582 7979 57