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Despite a large and growing literature on the subject, little is understood about the phenomenon of small business growth. Specifically, the small business growth literature has often emphasized “why” opposed to “how” firms grow. This chapter sheds light on this black box of growth by investigating the phases of planning and implementation processes separately to explore the choice of strategic expansion modes. It examines a much under-researched firm category: declining small firms. Employing a three-year longitudinal study using a multi-case study method, we find that while growth approaches are typically contextually (industry) derived, formalized planning greatly affects implementation. Further, resources are the key mediating variable between formal planning and implementation – firms with slack resources will typically implement their contextually influenced planned growth course, and firms with inadequate resources will typically implement through interactive learning, which causes them to downscale the growth plans or exit the market (merger or sale).

Fast‐growth companies illustrate, over a short space of time, the opportunities, threats, problems and pitfalls of business growth. After carrying out a general survey of fast‐growing companies in Britain, the authors carried out an in‐depth study of 30 of them. Organic growth and growth by acquisition were examined, as well as their strategic planning and implementation, their control of operations and their company development. Successful fast‐growth companies were found to be anti‐bureaucratic and task‐focused. The keys to their success were size flexibility and opportunism. The companies studied were bold in their strategy but unsophisticated in developing and implementing strategic plans. The main weakness of the companies was a lack of attention to managing transitions – i.e. controlling the evolution of the company as it grew. These weaknesses were revealed in the worsening business climate of the late 1980s, when many of these star performers of the early 1980s hit major problems.

The outcome of this research is twofold. First of all, it gives the reader insight in the evolution of the main activities, and the growth pattern of two groups of surviving small and medium enterprise start‐ups: at the one hand “Vlerick”‐starters who have enjoyed management training at the Centre of SMEs at De Vlerick School voor Management (Belgium), and at the other hand a group of “Others” who have not. Second, some of the research findings reveal clear evidence for the relationship between entrepreneurial characteristics and managerial techniques, planning skills and the business growth pattern of the enterprises of both groups. Even so, certain combinations pointing towards the likely catalysing effect of management training on growth‐related entrepreneurial and managerial attitudes and towards the influence of those attitudinal differences on planning skills and the enterprise growth pattern were identified. Throughout the paper explanatory value of interrelations between : sets of entrepreneurial and managerial qualifications; planning attitudes; and business survival and growth rates of starting SMEs is sufficiently established.

The paper aims to examine the management practices of owner‐managers of small businesses seeking to grow their firms. It seeks to better understand their strategic thinking in relation to internal and external environmental issues.

A sample of 204 owner‐managers who had indicated their desire for growth was surveyed using a questionnaire developed from earlier research that examined their strategic and operational behaviour. Follow‐up discussions over their results were conducted face‐to‐face. Data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and discriminant analysis.

Firms that possessed formal written business plans were found to be more likely to have stronger support network partnerships, formal quality assurance and the ability to lead change among employees. A relationship was found between an above average level of annual sales turnover and the personal vision of the owner‐managers.

Although the sample was atypical, in that it was comprised of owner‐managers who had a growth orientation, the study suggests that owner‐managers who have a strong growth orientation are likely to have an enhanced sense of their strategic vision, and the ability to communicate this vision to their employees.

The findings in this paper suggest that owner‐managers from small firms should seek to benchmark their business against industry best practice, but that such benchmarking must be supported by a clear strategic vision and the capacity to communicate this vision to others, particularly employees.

The literature relating to strategic thinking and behaviour within small firms remains underdeveloped, and this paper provides valuable insights into this area.

The purpose of this paper is to build a research model from the perspectives of entrepreneur and entrepreneurial opportunity examining the effects of entrepreneurial growth aspiration and the innovativeness of entrepreneurial opportunity and their interactive effect on the business planning in the new venture emergence.

Six hypotheses are put forward and examined by hierarchical multiple linear regression and multiple logistic regression. The data of this paper are based on the first two rounds of survey data from Chinese Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics.

The empirical results show that entrepreneurial growth aspiration has significant positive effects on the business planning, namely, compared to the comfortable size entrepreneurs, the growth-oriented entrepreneurs are more likely to do the business planning in the new venture emergence. Different from prior discoveries, the innovativeness of opportunity has no effect on the business planning, but it positively influences the time of doing business planning, and entrepreneurial growth aspiration has a positive moderate effect on this relationship.

Entrepreneurial growth aspiration in this paper is divided into growth-oriented entrepreneur and comfortable size entrepreneur from the single perspective of scale. Future research should define growth aspiration as a continuous variable in light of several dimensionalities.

The findings are useful for entrepreneurs to make rational and effective decisions whether to do business planning and when to do on the basis of their growth aspiration and the innovativeness of opportunity. The growth-oriented entrepreneur should do the business planning in the new venture emergence. The higher innovative the opportunity is, the latter the entrepreneur had better do the business planning. Besides, it provides the theoretical foundation for entrepreneurship training courses about business planning offered by governments, educational institutions and social training institutions.

This paper absorbs growth aspiration into the analysis framework about business planning based on expectancy theory, making up for deficiencies that prior researches excessively focus on entrepreneurial experience and opportunity. Additionally, the study will inspire scholars to research the mechanism of action relative to business planning from the interactive relationship between entrepreneur and entrepreneurial opportunity.

Successful growth companies represent the future. Their opportunistic, customer‐responsive styles and operating practices are just what today′s turbulent, competitive environment demands. As they grow, they will become powerful forces in the economy and their successful planning and operating practices will be adopted by other aspiring organisations. The focus is upon the fast‐growing companies in Britain. Their experience over a relatively short time frame demonstrates the opportunities, threats, problems and pitfalls attached to dramatic business growth. A new set of rules which would guide companies through the necessary and predictable transitions of growth are sought. It is hoped that chief executives and strategic planning directors will use the findings, conclusions and recommendations presented to shape the future practices of their own organisations.

This paper aims to explore the planning strategies of female entrepreneurs who have indicated a desire to grow their businesses, the time horizons of planning strategies and the relationship between planning horizons and number of employees and annual sales as measures of business performance.

In order to gather data for this exploratory study, a questionnaire was sent by e‐mail to members of networks of female entrepreneurs across England and Wales. Questionnaires were selected for analysis on the basis of an indication from the respondent that they wished to grow their business. Data were entered into SPSS to generate descriptive statistics, and conduct hypothesis testing.

The most preferred business growth strategies were: improving existing products or services and expanding advertising and promotion. Planning horizons are very short (often under three months), although the planning horizons associated with new products and entry into new markets were in some instances a little longer. Such short planning horizons could have serious consequences for business performance and growth. The planning horizons for cashflow, and investment in infrastructure showed a correlation with number of employees, whilst the planning horizons for cashflow, new product development, and expenditure showed a correlation with annual sales.

Female entrepreneurs need to be encouraged to extend their planning horizons, especially in terms of financial indicators such as expenditure, cash flow, and investment.

This research contributes to the growing literature on female entrepreneurs and their business, by providing further insight into their growth strategies and planning horizons.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the factors that influence small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) performance and particularly, growth.

This paper utilises an original data set of 360 SMEs employing 5‐249 people to run logit regression models of employment growth, turnover growth and profitability. The models include characteristics of the businesses, the owner‐managers and their strategies.

The results suggest that size and age of enterprise dominate performance and are more important than strategy and the entrepreneurial characteristics of the owner. Having a business plan was also found to be important.

The results contribute to the development of theoretical and knowledge bases, as well as offering results that will be of interest to research and policy communities. The results are limited to a single survey, using cross‐sectional data.

The findings have a bearing on business growth strategy for policy makers. The results suggest that policy measures that promote the take‐up of business plans and are targeted at younger, larger‐sized businesses may have the greatest impact in terms of helping to facilitate business growth.

A novel feature of the models is the incorporation of entrepreneurial traits and whether there were any collaborative joint venture arrangements.

Three studies aimed to investigate the role of perceived value of entrepreneurial identity (i.e. one's evaluation of the worthiness of one's entrepreneurial role) in the relationship between motives for entrepreneurship and business growth motivation among small-business owners.

Two studies were conducted online (Studies 1 and 2) and one study in the field in Indonesia (Study 3); both employed a cross-sectional design with a mixed correlational and experimental approach.

Opportunity-based entrepreneurship, but not necessity-based entrepreneurship, was positively associated with perceived value of entrepreneurial identity. Perceived value of entrepreneurial identity was a positive predictor of future time perspective and growth-pursuit intentions. Study 2 further showed the potential of increasing the salience of both personal and others' positive views of one's business for increasing one's perceived value of their entrepreneurial identity.

The investigation of perceived value of entrepreneurial identity in this paper extends current knowledge regarding the mechanism through which motives for entrepreneurship predict business growth motivation.

The paper provides practitioners and policy-makers with useful insights into the importance of small-business owners' perceived value of entrepreneurial identity for business growth motivation, and offers suggestions on how to increase it.

The paper sheds light on the important role of perceived value of entrepreneurial identity in explaining the association between motives for entrepreneurship and business growth motivation.

The goal of this research is to investigate the relationship between two different sets of practices, lean startup and business planning, and their relation to entrepreneurial performance.

The authors collected data from 120 entrepreneurs across the US about a variety of new venture formation activities within the categories of lean startup or business planning. They use hierarchical regression to examine the relationship between these activities and new venture performance using both a subjective and objective measure of performance.

The results show that talking to customers, collecting preorders and pivoting based on customer feedback are lean startup activities correlated with performance; writing a business plan is the sole business planning activity correlated with performance.

This research lays the foundation for understanding the components of both lean startup and business planning. Moreover, these results demonstrate that the separation of lean startup and business planning represents a false dichotomy.

These findings suggest that entrepreneurs should engage in some lean startup activities and still write a business plan.

This article offers the first quantitative, empirical comparison of lean startup activities and business planning. Furthermore, it provides support for the relationship between specific lean startup activities and firm performance.