Small firm Growth-Enabling Capability: Toward a Framework for Young Technology-Based Firms (WITHDRAWN)

Abstract

Growth of young technology-based firms (YTBFs) is dynamic rather than linear in nature. As such, the increased complexity accompanying their growth confronts YTBFs with unique challenges, making it difficult for these firms to grow. Despite this inherent complexity, however, there remains much left to discover in terms of how such transitioning processes can be facilitated. While earlier studies have mostly adopted a stage-based approach to exploring the notion of growth, we argue that viewing the concept through a dynamic perspective presents a more appropriate approach in the context of YTBFs. In this article we indeed assume a dynamic perspective to explore how YTBFs can facilitate dynamic growth transitions. Based on insights from strategic entrepreneurship and growth literature, we suggest that such transitioning is reflected by three inherent challenges: the engineering challenge, the orchestration challenge, and the legitimation challenge. To achieve our objective, we adopt a qualitative, systematic combining approach based on eight exploratory interviews, eight semi-structured interviews, and two focus groups. We find that YTBFs should focus on the development of absorptive, adaptive, networking, innovative, learning, and individual (managerial) capabilities, in order to enable growth-transitions. Our results are largely in line with, but also extending, existing literature in that they show how particular capabilities can be perceived as relevant growth-enabling capabilities. As such, this study contributes to several research streams, providing interesting paths to future investigation. First, by adopting a strategic entrepreneurship perspective, we adopt a novel approach to addressing the problem of growth-transitioning in the context of YTBFs. Similarly, this allows us to explore the relevance and application of dynamic capabilities in the same context, which has received a rather limited attention as opposed to that of established firms. To further clarify our article’s contributions, we develop a comprehensive framework, connecting our results to existing literature, explaining how each capability can be related to particular challenges, thereby paving the way for further research on the topic. In doing so, we provide managerial insights for YTBFs’ managers to enhance their understanding of growth and more appropriately allocate their resource-investments. Our study’s main limitation is represented by the relatively small sample used and its exploratory approach, which provides incentive for further empirical investigation to validate our results.