The Evolution of Business

Ellen M. Korsager is an Assistant professor of business history at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

1. Introduction

Penrose and the historical study of firm growth

Subjectivity, entrepreneurial attitude, and image of context

The creation of meaning

The social nature of meaning

Change and Geertz’ concept of culture

Thick Description and narratives

The case of Fiberline and the use of empirical material

2. Founding a company and formulating a basic narrative

The circumstances of the start-up

Pultrusion

The basic narrative of Fiberline

Establishing a proper motive and a founder

Naming the product and the market

Specifying the production process and constructing the birth of a company

3. The prior experience of Henrik Thorning and the context of the Start-up

The plastic industry in Denmark in the 1970s and start 80s

The development of the composite industry in Denmark

Environmental concerns and organizing the industry

Dukadan and Henrik Thorning’s two years working there

Jotun

Innovation in the Danish plastic industry

4. Putting resources to service and strengthening the basic narrative in the start-up process

Getting started

The first sales

The everydayness of acute problems

5. How should the profiles of Fiberline be sold?

Pressure building

Strong export growth of the Danish plastic industry

A gradual focus on sales

Standard profiles and distributors

The origins of the international focus

The narrative of how profiles should be sold and to whom

6. The efforts of financing and opportunities for growth

Continued pressure after 1983

Financing behavior over time

Bootstrapping and effectuation in financing behavior

7. Productive opportunities and technological base

The growth of Fiberline and of the Danish plastic industry from the mid-1980s until the late 1990s

External inducements to diversification - Processed profiles and systems

Internal inducements to diversification – phenol based profiles and construction profiles

8. Market focus and developing the sales organization

The composites industry around the turn of the millennium

Seven good years of development and organization building

Establishing the sales organization

Diversification and uncertainty

Sales and strategic plans in the early 1990s

Operational systems and the strategic plans in the late 1990s

9. Discussion

The case of Fiberline and the theoretical choices I have made

The study of firm growth and path dependency

The study of business history

The study of entrepreneurship

The study of internationalization

10. Conclusion