TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– This paper, anchored in the resource‐based view of the firm, attempts to develop linkages between firm‐level resources, Porter's competitive strategy space and firm performance and explores them in the context of a new industry – the marketing technology industry.Design/methodology/approach– In the marketing technology industry the authors classify resource configurations (generalists, specialists, innovators) which group firms with distinctive competences on similar resource dimensions. They then map these firm‐level resource configurations onto their respective optimal strategies in the industry's competitive strategy space.Findings– The major findings are: some firms that are close together in strategy space vary in performance; some firms that are close together in strategy space belong to quite different resource configurations; firms that belong to the same resource configuration (i.e. are close together in resource space and distant from others) vary in performance; given the origin (i.e. resource configuration) of a new entrant there exists an optimal strategy that can be theoretically defined; and corresponding to each resource configuration there seems to exist a unique optimal region in strategy space.Originality/value– It is one of few attempts to empirically explore the parallels between firm level resource‐based and industry level competitive strategies. VL - 1 IS - 1 SN - 1755-425X DO - 10.1108/17554250810909400 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/17554250810909400 AU - Furrer Olivier AU - Sudharshan D. AU - Thomas Howard AU - Tereza Alexandre Maria PY - 2008 Y1 - 2008/01/01 TI - Resource configurations, generic strategies, and firm performance: Exploring the parallels between resource‐based and competitive strategy theories in a new industry T2 - Journal of Strategy and Management PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 15 EP - 40 Y2 - 2024/04/25 ER -