Firm growth. This concept has interested researchers for generations. Economists have sought to predict and measure firm growth using a host of different variables, while strategic management scholars depict growth as the result of clever analyses and rational resource exploitation. Entrepreneurship scholars - ever engrossed by successful start-ups - have pondered why growth sometimes comes fast and sometimes never at all, while the field of business history has given countless examples of growing firms in a range of different settings. Yet despite research across fields, our knowledge of how growth in a firm actually comes about is limited and we still know little about the process. This book offers a new reading of economist Edith Penrose’s The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. The bold statement is that although Penrose’s work - across fields and generations - is amongst the most quoted on firm growth, the basic points of her work have yet to be realized and explored empirically. Essentially, growth is created by a dynamic interrelation between the firm’s self-conception and its image of context. Based on these two subjective categories, the firm makes decisions and its actions lead it to develop along a particular path. To Penrose this is the basic engine that drives the growth and development of firms. This book discusses how the engine of firm growth can be captured in empirical analysis using interpretative theory and narrative methods inspired by recent streams of research in business history.

Attempts to convey some of the complexities and dynamism of international business by examining its history, from the nineteenth century origins of internaional trade to the present day.

Mohan and Oliver have been very fortunate to have intimate views into the data challenges that face the largest organizations and institutions across every possible industry—and what they have been hearing about for some time is how the business needs to use data and analytics to their advantage. They continually hear the same issues, such as: We're spending valuable meeting time wondering why everyone's data doesn't match up. We can't leverage our economies of scale while remaining agile with data. We need self-serve apps that let the enterprise experiment with data and accelerate the development process. We need to get on a more predictive curve to ensure long-term success. To really address the data concerns of today's enterprise, they wanted to find a way to help enterprises achieve the success they seek. Not as a prescriptive process—but a methodology to become agile and leverage data and analytics to drive a competitive advantage. You know, it's amazing what can happen when two people with very different perspectives get together to solve a big problem. This evolutionary guide resulted from the a-ha moment between these two influencers at the top of their fields—one, an academic researcher and consultant, and the other, a longtime analytics practitioner and chief product officer at Teradata. Together, they created a powerful framework every type of business can use to connect analytic power, business practices, and human dynamics in ways that can transform what is currently possible.

If you've ever asked the questions “Can I keep up with the pace of change?” or “What is the purpose of my business?” Business Evolution is packed with powerful tools and real-life examples to help you find the answers and steer your own path.Janice B Gordon is a respected business consultant with twenty-five years of experience running and advising businesses; her particular talents are for guiding businesses through change to growth, building customer insights and relationships. Janice distils her "Essential 4 Ps" – Personality, Purpose, Pleasure and Process – which will guide you and your business to adapt and grow in the face of increasing and accelerating change.The global world has become personal. Technology allows us to connect like never before. Business Evolution looks at the way we can connect to create growth and offers mature, reassuring wisdom that will take you into the future with confidence.Whether you are ready for the next stage of growth or just starting out, Janice B Gordon's Business Evolution will give you the guidance you need. Buy it, Read it, Apply it & Evolve Your Business!www.business-evolution.bizPraise for "Business Evolution"“This book is for businesses wanting to grow their business by giving practical insights relevant in this rapidly changing global economy. It is clear Janice knows her stuff; I would highly recommend you to Buy it, Read it, Apply it & Evolve it!” Lara Morgan Entrepreneur and Investor “Wow! Business Evolution is the most enjoyable book about how to grow your business I've ever read. Through quite challenging, and always credible, exercises, Janice explains her 'Essential 4Ps', which will keep your business growing and give plenty of 'wows' to your customers. This business book is the real deal on how to grow your business. It is a five star 'wow' for me which I will return to, time after time.”Tony Robinson OBE Entrepreneur, Business Advisory Board & Enterprise Rockers

In a field dominated by anecdote and folklore, this landmark study integrates more than ten years of intensive research and modern theories of business and economics. The result is a comprehensive framework for understanding entrepreneurship that provides new and penetrating insights. This clearly and concisely written book is essential for anyone who wants to start a business, for the entrepreneur or executive who wants to grow a company, and for the scholar who wants to understand this crucial economic activity.

Top executives increasingly see the competitive advantage of their firms coming from their ability to exploit knowledge and learning. Policy-makers likewise see the fate of national and regional economies being determined by the emergence of a knowledge economy.These views place great importance on the way in which knowledge evolves within business. However, to date, our understanding of that evolution has been limited by a tendency to see knowledge as simply a resource or input to be transformed into outputs. This R&D-centred view of business knowledge has recently been challenged by other views which emphasize the contribution of organizational learning, social practices, and management structures to its evolution within and betweenorganizations. Competitive success is seen as dependent on the firm's ability to mobilize all of these different kinds of knowledge.Based on the findings of a major research programme funded by the UK's ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) and DTI (Department for Trade and Industry), this book makes a major contribution to this emerging picture of the evolution of business knowledge. The detailed empirical studies contained within it have been undertaken by some of the UK's leading management researchers. They cover a variety of sectors ranging from overtly knowledge producing institutions such as business schoolsand the scientific professions, through intermediary groups such as consultants and lobby groups to the creation and application of knowledge by firms, large and small. This work highlights the impact of different institutional contexts, social networks and technological artefacts on the way differentgroups share and exploit knowledge for business goals. Its findings challenge the idea that knowledge and learning are simply a resource or input to be directed by managers and policy-makers. Instead, they show how knowledge evolves through its embedding and disembedding within different business contexts - as much despite of, rather than because of, the efforts of management and policy-makers, who are often more concerned with the day-to-day pressures of their own roles.

The Evolution of a New Industry traces the emergence and growth of the Israeli hi-tech sector to provide a new understanding of industry evolution. In the case of Israel, the authors reveal how the hi-tech sector built an entrepreneurial culture with a capacity to disseminate intergenerational knowledge of how to found new ventures, as well as an intricate network of support for new firms. Following the evolution of this industry from embryonic to mature, Israel Drori, Shmuel Ellis, and Zur Shapira develop a genealogical approach that relies on looking at the sector in the way that one might consider a family tree. The principles of this genealogical analysis enable them to draw attention to the dynamics of industry evolution, while relating the effects of the parent companies' initial conditions to their respective corporate genealogies and imprinting potential. The text suggests that genealogical evolution is a key mechanism for understanding the rate and extent of founding new organizations, comparable to factors such as opportunity structures, capabilities, and geographic clusters.