High-growth firms and technological knowledge: do gazelles follow exploration or exploitation strategies?

Alessandra Colombelli, Jackie Krafft and Francesco Quatraro

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Abstract: This article analyzes the contribution of high-growth firms (HGFs) to the process of knowledge creation. We articulate a demand-pull innovation framework in which knowledge creation is driven by sales growth, and knowledge stems from creative recombination. Building on the literature on HGFs and economic growth, we investigate whether "gazelles" follow patterns of knowledge creation dominated by exploration or exploitation strategies. We construct indicators for the structure of knowledge and identify firms' innovation strategies. The empirical results show that increasing growth rates are associated with exploration, supporting the idea that HGFs are key actors in the creation of new technological knowledge, and showing also that firms that achieve higher than average growth focus on exploration based on familiar technology. This suggests that exploration is less random than has been suggested. Our main result is that HGFs, especially gazelles, predominantly adopt exploration strategies that have the characteristics of organized search more often observed among firms following an exploitation strategy.

Keywords: High growth firms; gazelles; exploration strategy; exploitation strategy; technological knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-01-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ent, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-sbm and nep-tid
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-01070569
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

Published in Industrial and Corporate Change, 2014, 23 (1), pp.261-291

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Related works:
Working Paper: High Growth Firms and Technological Knowledge: Do gazelles follow exploration or exploitation strategies? (2014)
Working Paper: High Growth Firms and Technological Knowledge: Do gazelles follow exploration or exploitation strategies? (2011)
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