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Multiple entrepreneurship can offer an alternative approach to understanding business growth mechanisms. Despite the growing interest in entrepreneurs who have been involved in more than one venture, few studies have focused on serial and portfolio entrepreneurship. This article explores the prevalence of multiple entrepreneurship among successful small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in peripheral locations, and compares SMEs owned by multiple business entrepreneurs with SMEs owned by single business entrepreneurs. Multiple business entrepreneurs were defined as SME owner‐managers who are both serial and portfolio owners simultaneously. Among successful owner‐managed SMEs 22 per cent of firms were owned by such multiple entrepreneurs, and only 50 per cent by single business entrepreneurs. The comparison revealed 11 variables that showed differences between these two groups of SMEs. Multiple entrepreneurship was emphasized among entrepreneurs of growth firms. The findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the roles of the multiple entrepreneurs in regional economic development.

The aim of this article is to identify strategic factors differentiating team‐managed growing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and individually managed growing SMEs.

The study took a holistic and wide‐ranging approach to factors affecting SME growth and performance, and analyzed the data of 63 team‐managed SMEs and 45 individually managed SMEs.

The main finding was that there are few differences between team‐managed growing SMEs and individually managed growing SMEs. Moreover, the variables differing between the two groups of SMEs were not related to firm performance outcomes or strategic choices made by the firms. In addition, the effect of team for strategic choices is not associated with the size of an SME.

The study focused on growing established SMEs. The findings question the impact of team for firm performance and strategies in the context of growing SMEs. This suggests that the role of team management in the context of growing SMEs can be different from the role in other contexts. However, the study has several limitations which may affect the results.

The strategies employed by growing SMEs are not dependent on whether the firm is managed by a team or by a solo entrepreneur.

The findings suggest that team‐managed growing SMEs are not a distinct species among growth SMEs. There are no differences in firm performance or strategic choices between team‐managed growing SMEs and individually managed growing SMEs.

The purpose of this study was to identify those factors that are supposed to be the most important in terms of small business success in tourism industry. The empirical data is collected within one region in Finland. The respondents were asked to evaluate the importance of the given factors for the firm's success and how highly the respondent evaluated the company's expertise in each factor in their operations. Questionnaires were sent by mail to a total of 214 tourism businesses. The final response rate was 43% (92 businesses). According to the analysis of the data, the respondents emphasise the importance of customer orientation, good skills in leadership, internal marketing and a good reputation of the firm and the product. The impact of external advice (incubators, consultants, research organisations) was evaluated as the least important factor of success. So, market orientation seems to play a key role in the performance of small and micro tourism firms. Customer orientation is also well mastered according to the businesses. The greatest development needs would be in the areas of price and accessibility, as well as in customer orientation. The results of this study indicate that there are no statistically significant differences in the views held by slowly or fast growing tourism businesses regarding the importance of the success factors. The same factors are considered important and less important in both slowly and fast growing businesses. Neither were there any statistically significant differences in these businesses as to the expertise in these success factors.

The present study sheds light on the role of strategic orientations (SOs) in explaining business growth. The purpose of this paper is to examine how different SOs, namely learning orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and brand orientation simultaneously affect business performance measured with brand performance, market performance and business growth in SME context and whether these effects vary across countries.

An extensive data set of 1,120 effective responses is collected from two European countries, namely Hungary, representing a post socialist rapidly growing market, and Finland with a stable, highly developed and competitive economy. A multigroup moderation analysis is conducted. Confirmatory factor analysis is used in testing measurement invariance, subsequently followed by structural equation modeling procedure used in testing research hypotheses developed on the basis of a literature review.

The results show that entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and brand orientation have a positive effect on business growth in SMEs in both Hungary and Finland through brand and market performance. With regard to learning orientation, a positive yet somewhat weak effect on growth is found only in the Hungarian sample. The moderation analysis reveals that country moderates several of the hypothesized paths from SOs to business performance.

Prior studies on SOs have mainly focussed on single orientations at any given time. However, researchers increasingly argue that many firms are better off if they build their strategies on multiple SOs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first empirical studies to address multiple (four) SOs in the same research model. Furthermore, little is known about if and how the performance effects of different SOs vary across countries.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of emerging economies play a key role in driving a country’s economic development. Business-to-business (B2B) SMEs of emerging economies play a key role in driving a country’s economic development. Past researchers have recognized that such impacts are simply magnified by B2B entrepreneurs. However, the performance of B2B SMEs and the contributory factors behind such performance has got limited attention. This study aims to explore factors impacting the performance of B2B SMEs of emerging economies as viewed by SME owner-manager.

In this study, we have taken Indian B2B SMEs as our focal point of study. Primary data has been collected from the owner-manager of auto component SMEs of India. This study has examined direct and indirect (mediating) effects of predictors on outcome variables. In this study, structural equation modelling was used through AMOS 22 and the default method-maximum likelihood for estimating the model.

The result shows that entrepreneurial orientation (EO), growth orientation (GO) and market orientation (MO) directly impact the performance of B2B SMEs. It also reveals that brand orientation (BO) mediates the relationship between EO, GO and MO and performance for B2B SMEs. The result advocates that for B2B SMEs operating in emerging economies, being brand-oriented is a prominent strategic move for sustainable performance.

The current empirical research to bridge the research gap in the context of B2B SMEs from emerging economies by exploring important factors, propose their impact on the performance of B2B SMEs and empirically test those hypothesized relationships. This study deciphers that being brand-oriented impacts the entrepreneurial spirit, growth objectives and market readiness of the B2B SMEs and, in turn, influences the performance of B2B SMEs. The study advocates that B2B SMEs from emerging economies should adopt a BO approach and they should invest in the brand-building process.

This paper aims to analyze learning in organizational transformations by focusing on concept-level tensions faced in two young companies, which were searching for a reorientation of activity with a production network between innovative product development and efficient mass production.

An intervention-based research project was carried out with two manufacturing companies. The data originate from workshops, whose aim was to identify learning needs based on the discussion of practices of networked production. Concept-level learning is analyzed by examining the dynamic relationships between production concepts and product concepts.

The most influential concept-level tension stemmed from the co-existence of two production concepts, product development and mass production, which manifested as ambiguity about proper actions in the production network. Other focal tensions were identified between the production and product concepts and within the companies’ network relationships. The dominance of the mass production concept restricted the envisioning of new modes of collaboration and mutual learning in the production network.

The workshop participants did not include representatives from the case companies’ production network. Nevertheless, researchers brought the network partners’ conceptions into the workshop discussion through the presented mirror data.

Companies striving to develop novel production concepts that call for continuous collaboration with customers and suppliers need forums for mutual learning to create solutions to concept-level tensions.

Companies may develop two production concepts over lengthy periods. The tensions that manifest due to incoherent guiding logics may be overcome by engaging in incremental and expansive concept-level learning, directed at the identification of relationships between production and product concepts.