Capability-based growth: the case of UK tourism SMEs.

Abstract

This chapter investigates the ways in which UK small and medium-sized tourism enterprises (tourism SMEs) convert their resource base into distinct capability platforms that give them a competitive advantage and enable them to grow. The types of growth-enabling capabilities within this sector are also discussed. The factors constraining growth as well as the factors that contribute towards the growth of tourism SMEs are identified. A dynamic McKinsey Consultants' model that seek to analyse growth over differing time horizons in relation to capability platforms that underpin each growth at each stage of the firm's development, is deployed in this study as an analytical framework. Three case studies of UK tourism SMEs reveal that each firm has achieved a sustained capability-based growth. In each case, this growth has been incremental and underpinned by the development of leverage capabilities specific to the circumstances of the particular firm at a particular time. Despite a great similarity of these firms' resources and partial similarity of foundation capabilities, most of the leverage capabilities have varied from firm to firm.