New Venture Strategies in the Minicomputer Industry

The State of Small Business, Report to the President, Transmitted to the Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983).

The Business Failure Record, 1980 (New York, NY: Dun & Bradstreet, Business Economics Division, 1982).

Hannan Michael T. Freeman John H. , “The Population Ecology of Organizations,” American Journal of Sociology, 82 (1977).

Peters Thomas J. Waterman Robert H. Jr. , In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1982).

Burgelman Robert A. , “Designs for Corporate Entrepreneurship in Established Firms,” California Management Review, 26/3 (Spring 1984): 154–166.

Brittain Jack Freeman John , “Organizational Proliferation and Density-Dependent Selection,” in Kimberly John R. Miles Robert H. , eds., The Organizational Life Cycle (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1980).

Miles Raymond E. Snow Charles C. , “Fit, Failure, and the Hall of Fame,” California Management Review, 26/3 (Spring 1984): 10–28.

Chandler Alfred D. , Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1962).

Ibid.

Ibid.

Carroll Glenn R. , “The Specialist Strategy,” California Management Review, 26/3 (Spring 1984): 126–137.

I use the word “choice” somewhat broadly here. A firm may be constrained by the nature of expertise on its management team or by restrictions imposed by external actors to address either a broad or narrow segment of the marketplace. I assume, however, that managers retain at least some control over the existence or strength of these constraints. Firms, of course, may also “choose” to be “dumb” with respect to their strategic decisions.

Staw Barry M. Sandelands Lance E. Dutton Jane E. , “Threat-Rigidity Effects in Organizational Behavior: A Multilevel Analysis,” Administrative Science Quarterly (December 1981).

For more detailed discussion of methods and more rigorous analysis of data, see Romanelli Elaine , “Contexts and Strategies of Organization Creation: Patterns in Performance,” Working Paper, Duke University; and Romanelli Elaine , “Organization Persistence and Adaptation: A Comparison of Alternative Theoretical Models,” Working Paper, Duke University.

Correlations between number of market segments addressed and number of product lines introduced were moderate to low, and largely insignificant.

Because our study ended in 1981, we could not examine whether firms born during transition to maturity tended to persist or change their strategic activity patterns.