Growth Profiles of High Technology Firms

One of the fundamental issues in organization and strategy research is identifying the factors that influence the development of firms over time. The current book introduces a new perspective regarding the firm development process - the Firm Growth Profile (FGP). We define the FGP as: a pattern of growth common to a cluster of firms that take similar actions while retaining a degree of idiosyncraticity. We assert that external factors limit variance in the way firms grow, hence firm development is not a purely idiosyncratic firm-level process, but rather an evolutionary process influenced by the external environment. Accordingly, we expect to identify groups of firms that operate in a similar way under similar external conditions or in specific contexts. To demonstrate this point of view we analyze the growth patterns of Israeli Hi Tech firms. In one study we analyze the exploration and exploitation patterns of firm activities along the product life cycle, by distinguishing between "component" and "total solution" producers. In a second study we focus on another major type of action sequence taken by Hi Tech firms – financial liquidation.