What determines the failure or success of a unicorn?

Unicorn status had almost lost its value with over 130 startups in Silicon Valley received a valuation of over a billion dollars. However, many of these unicorns that were once thought to be too-innovative-to-fail, went public and lost their market value. With plummeting market shares of these startups, the "slain" unicorn has become a hot topic in the US.

Naturally, everyone is wondering why this is happening. According to a recent piece on Harvard Business Review, this can be attributed to the lack of continual innovation. They received the unicorn status because of their disruptive idea, however, many of them failed to innovate to stay relevant with the times.

The piece illustrates that as a company grows in size, the culture to innovate becomes challenging to maintain. Plus, if an idea is disruptive with immense potential, there inevitably will be strong competition as others will try to take advantage of the trend. The original startups then end up directing all their energy info fending off competition than innovating for the market.

Very innovative startups need to tread carefully, as growing too much too fast can be dangerous in the long run. To maintain their unicorn status, they need to take innovative steps to keep moving forward. Read more about the analysis of the failure of unicorns in Silicon Valley here.