Is that only entrepreneurs' willingness to grow???

From my postings you could conclude that the topic on Growing Pains struck me the most. At this time, I want to go back to the post, where I mentioned that sometimes entrepreneurs are not willing to change or they might not trust others (mostly managers) and do not delegate responsibilities, which further does not allow a firm to grow. I would like to add here that most entrepreneurial companies fail to grow or have hard time to survive due to the limited nature of entrepreneurial resources. As Penrose (1955) describes, firms are inhibited in their ability to expand due to lack of entrepreneur’s interest in experimenting or a lack of their confidence in dealing with new and unfamiliar lines of activities. When limited demand appears on the existing products and services of a firm, management or entrepreneur has to has to introduce something new, either create a new product or develop a new market. For those to be accomplished, versatile type of management is required, while according to Penrose (1955) those services are not likely to be equally available to all companies. From my point of view, this point can be applied to the case of entrepreneurs failing to recognize and overcome growing pains in the their companies. From my personal experience, I have seen small family businesses in my country being highly satisfied with their existing products and owners mostly like to remain in their field of specialization. Moreover, they lack the interest in experimenting new lines of activity and lack confidence in their ability to deal with something ´´new´´ and ´´uncertain´´, respectively. To conclude, there are many characteristics of the firms and the entrepreneurs that constitute the failure of dealing with ´´growing pains´´ when they arise. Significantly, the nature of entrepreneurs meaning their willingness to change might determine the extent of future growth of a firm.


References:
Penrose, E. (1955). Limits to the growth and size of firms. The American Economic Review 45(2), 531-543.