Speed and Scaling: An Investigation of Accelerated Firm Growth

Abstract

While most firms do not grow, a small number of firms are able to maintain and accelerate their growth over time. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers continue to question the factors which increase a firm's chances of growing rapidly and becoming a more powerful economic driver. Using a robust longitudinal data set from the United Kingdom (UK) during the period from 2000 to 2017, we investigate the propensity of firms to accelerate growth in sales, employment, market share, and productivity. We report varying effects of firm characteristics, industry competitive factors, and regional factors as drivers of accelerated growth. This study will help policymakers and firm managers understand the forces behind different types of acceleration, and it provides a foundation for future research on the speed of firm growth.

Scaling‐up: Building, Leading and Sustaining Rapid Growth Over Time

“…Synthesizing earlier insights across different levels of analysis may allow for the discovery of boundary conditions shaping the emergence of HGFs in a particular region that may otherwise go unnoticed or misinterpreted. In this respect, the special issue article ‘ Speed and Scaling: An Investigation of Accelerated Firm Growth ’ (Belitski et al, In press) demonstrates how specific internal and external factors influence various types of accelerated growth. By developing a multi‐level model, they suggest that a firm's accelerated growth depends on both endogenous factors, such as firm age and size, and exogenous factors, such as industry competition and regional dynamics.…”

“…A third dimension of scaling strategies refers to the unit of analysis, specifically the unit of scaling. While there has been a tendency in the literature to investigate scaling outputs (see Belitski et al, In press), the unit or locus of scaling has been largely ignored however seems rather important because it addresses what is being scaled. The locus could be a product or service solution (e.g., Netflix, Spotify), a technology (e.g., Bespoken Spirits), a resource or capability (e.g., CEMEX), or a business model (e.g., Dropbox, Shopify).…”

“…While a cross‐sectional variance‐based approach continues to have merit in examining the correlates of scaling in HGFs, we need richer insights into how firms scale over time, and whether scaling dynamics follow linear, non‐linear, or other dynamic patterns. A case in point is the article in our special issue ‘Speed and Scaling: An Investigation of Accelerated Firm Growth’ by Belitski et al (In press). In a study of UK firms over the period 2000 to 2017, Belitski and colleagues introduced a new dynamic of firm growth, referred to as firm acceleration.…”

Thriving in turbulent environments through adaptive forms of organizing

“…In other words, companies that are apparently capable of continuously adapting their organizational model to the increasingly turbulent environments in which they operate (Burton et al, 2020) see a more striking improvement to their performance than their competitors (Belitski et al, 2022). By adopting a strategic organizational design perspective (Kretschmer and Khashabi, 2020) and, more specifically, the microstructural approach proposed by Puranam (2018), we claim that these improvements are achieved by ensuring ownership of specific dynamic capabilities (Teece, 2007).…”

“…Traditional businesses have become aware that they need to organize themselves differently, but are beset with uncertainty and failure when trying to make the necessary changes (Iansiti and Nadella, 2022). Digitally savvy companies seem able to organize themselves in unconventional ways (Reeves et al, 2015) and tend to achieve considerable growth in performance (Belitski et al, 2022). Practitioners (Ismail et al, 2014) call these firms exponential organizations and suggest actionable models for "going exponential" (Palao et al, 2019).…”