Fostering growth through business development: Core activities and challenges for micro-firm entrepreneurs

As a concept stemming from practice, business development has received scarce academic attention. In this paper, we explore core business development activities of micro-firms and the challenges they perceive in conducting them. Based on interviews with 30 micro-firms, we identify three core busines...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of management & organization 2017-03, Vol.23 (2), p.167-185
Main Authors: Achtenhagen, Leona, Ekberg, Sara, Melander, Anders
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alliances
Business growth
Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship
growth
micro-firms
Organization development
Penrose
resource practices
Small business
Studies
Success
Sweden
Value creation
Web portals
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:As a concept stemming from practice, business development has received scarce academic attention. In this paper, we explore core business development activities of micro-firms and the challenges they perceive in conducting them. Based on interviews with 30 micro-firms, we identify three core business development activities that leverage the firm’s resource base, complemented by three support activities that secure and organize the firm’s resources. We find the business development activities to be tightly related to the three practices of leveraging, securing and organizing resources. We also identify three important contextual influences on business development in micro-firms: industry, age and if the firm is in an incubator. Our findings contribute to developing a conceptualization and theorization of business development for micro-firms, which is relevant as the vast majority of companies worldwide are micro-firms, but many never embark on a growth path. Based on our results, we outline practical implications, for example, how companies could overcome their perceived lack of time and an agenda for future research encouraging further studies comprising micro-firms with different qualities.
ISSN:1833-3672
1839-3527
1839-3527
DOI:10.1017/jmo.2016.58