Introduction

In this book, the author portrays a confident firm that perceives itself as an entrepreneurial start-up, founded on the vision of Henrik Thorning, and grown to become an international technological leader of the industry. This would seem a happy history of development and growth. The author tells her history of Fiberline, asking how this company developed through time from idea to international company. She uses this history to theorize the concept of growth drawing on the seminal work of British economist Edith Penrose. The author explores the underpinnings of the growth process, showing it to be both highly subjective and context dependent. In doing so she offers a new and deeper reading of Penrose's theory of growth; a reading which embraces the historicity of her arguments and focuses on the mechanisms of decision-making that lies beneath the firm's use of resources.