Growth Through Metamorphosing

Abstract

One of the central concerns of the literature studying firms' growth is the need for understanding the rationale underlying the growth process from the company perspective. The appearance of novel patterns of firms' growth is linked to the emergence of new paradigms for the organization of industrial and manufacturing processes (that is, industrial revolution). The paper discusses evidence from a sample of fast-growing large companies taken from the Fortune 500 ranking. Results show patterns of firms' growth more in line with traditional sectors which are fuelled by scale and scope economies, and other patterns, observed more often in the case of high-tech "new economy" companies, which are instead mostly driven by network effects and platformization strategies. We label the latter phenomenon "metamorphosing", a pattern of growth characterized by a constant reshaping of horizontal and vertical boundaries by the firm which aims at taking advantage of market opportunities by exploiting its keystone position in platformbased business.

A New Relationship Between Globalisation and Interest Representation

“…the associated redefinition of business boundaries (Gaio et al, 2018) and the internal connections among the various sectoral components. In reference to the first point, 70% of goods and services traded on the international market today involve exchanges between countries that can generally fit into the global value chains.…”

“…If we look at the reality of productive phenomena, not only in large multinationals but also in small and medium-sized enterprises, we realize the difficulty of defining productive roles in value chains with a continuous exchange of material and immaterial factors that Industry 4.0 and the widespread use of digital technologies have erased and rendered difficult to identify (Brondoni & Zaninotto, 2018;Büchi et al, 2018). Specifically, genuine business platforms have appeared which are continuously redefining the vertical and horizontal business boundaries that identify a company (Gaio et al, 2018). Consequently, room for intermediation roles carried out at a national level tends to become increasingly narrow.…”