اولویت‌بندی عوامل شکست استارت‌آپ‌ها با استفاده از فرایند تحلیل سلسله‌مراتبی فازی

چکیده

Purpose: Startup failure remains a major challenge in innovation-driven economies, making the identification and prioritization of failure factors essential for entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers. Although previous studies have identified numerous determinants of startup failure, relatively little attention has been devoted to assessing their relative importance through quantitative decision-making approaches. Furthermore, expert judgments in this domain are inherently uncertain, limiting the effectiveness of conventional analytical methods. Therefore, this study aims to prioritize startup failure factors using the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP).

Methodology: This applied study adopts a quantitative multi-criteria decision-making approach. Startup failure factors and sub-factors were extracted from previous research and organized into a hierarchical structure. Pairwise comparison matrices were then developed using the  FAHP, in which linguistic judgments were converted into triangular fuzzy numbers to calculate the final weights of criteria and alternatives. All computations were performed using Microsoft Excel.

Findings: The results indicate that poor management is the most influential startup failure factor, followed by insufficient financial resources, technical and innovation-related problems, market-related challenges, and legal issues. Overall, managerial and financial deficiencies exert substantially greater influence on startup failure than environmental and regulatory factors, highlighting the importance of strengthening managerial capabilities, financial planning, and team development to reduce failure risk.

Originality/Value: This study contributes by applying the  FAHP to quantitatively prioritize startup failure factors under uncertainty. Unlike previous studies that primarily identify failure determinants, the proposed approach determines their relative importance and provides a systematic decision-support framework for entrepreneurs, investors, startup accelerators, and policymakers.