Purpose - The aim of this study is to advance the understanding of firm growth determinants by comparing the factors influencing young firms' growth in 13 countries corresponding to three contrasting ...regions.Design methodology approach - The authors propose an integrated model of venture growth where entrepreneurs' profile, firm resources and market characteristics are combined. This model is tested using three OLS regressions, one corresponding to each region.Findings - The results show that compared with the remainder two regions, the less favorable business conditions verified in Latin American countries emphasize the relevance of entrepreneurs' human capital endowments in determining business development and its further growth. On the contrary, market-related issues and the availability of financial resources are more important in South-East Asia and Mediterranean Europe. Team size and particularly its growth are positively associated with firm growth in all the studied regions.Practical implications - The results of this study confirm that a firm's growth determinants as well as their importance vary across regions. Consequently, policy interventions should take into account the specificity of each region when designing entrepreneurial policies, avoiding the adoption of "one size fits all" solutions.Originality value - The main contribution of this paper is twofold: first, it collects empirical evidence about young firm growth in less studied regions; second, by comparing the results for each region differential effects of several determinants of firm growth in quite contrasting contexts are discussed.
Resource Realignment in Servitization Huikkola, Tuomas; Kohtamäki, Marko; Rabetino, Rodrigo
Research technology management,
07/2016, Volume:
59, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
When transitioning from a product-centered business model to one focusing on providing services and solutions, manufacturers must realign and reallocate resources to support the new business model. ...Based on a study of nine leading solution providers that have successfully transitioned from products to services, we demonstrate how manufacturers create new resources and organizational structures to facilitate co-creation of value with customers, leverage existing resources to develop new service products and markets, and systematically release non-core upstream resources to nurture downstream resources.
Though time is an important dimension of the venture creation process, our understanding of why some entrepreneurs are able to act more quickly than others is limited. Equally, not much is known ...about the relationship between venture creation speed and the subsequent venture growth. In this paper, we use a resource-based perspective to provide insights into the factors that quicken or retard venture creation and to explore how speed impacts on subsequent growth. This is important because the topic remains generally underresearched and because even less is understood about venture creation speed in the context of South American economies. Data were collected from face-to-face interviews with 647 entrepreneurs in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru. Using a multivariate regression framework, we find that entrepreneurs make use of their human and social capital resources to shape the speed by which their venture is created. Moreover, their perceptions of unfavorable environmental conditions seem to retard venture creation. Findings also suggest that entrepreneurs who take more time to create a more solid resource base tend to receive better growth outcomes. Implications from the findings are discussed.
New ventures are increasingly playing an important role in Latin American economies. However, little is known about the determinants of new firm growth in this context. The purpose of this study is ...to gain an understanding of the factors influencing new firm growth in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru. Individual, organizational and environmental factors are included in an empirical model, which is tested using data collected by face-to-face interviews with 582 entrepreneurs. Different specifications of employment growth and regression approaches are employed. Results suggest that growth strongly depends on the characteristics of the entrepreneur. National environment and firm-related factors are also important factors in determining growth.
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