Why do some firms perform better than others? What enables a firm to grow and take advantage of its opportunities? Currently much discussion of these questions pivots around the ideas of competencies and capabilities, and the concept of the learning organization or knowledge-creating company....

Edith Penrose's tightly argued classic laid the foundations for the resource based view of the firm, now the dominant framework in business strategy She analyses managerial activities and decisions, organizational routines, and also the factors that inevitably limit a firm's growth prospects....

Edith Penrose's "The theory of the growth of the firm" has offered key ingredients to an evolutionary approach to the growth of the firm. The entrepreneur enlivened by Edith Penrose in that book is revisited here, considering the role played by institutions in his decision-making. It is argued...