Advancing firm growth research: A focus on growth mode instead of growth rate

The development of firm growth research has been notably slow. In this paper, we argue that a major reason for this lack of development is the impatience of researchers to prematurely address the question of " how much?" before adequately providing answers to the question " how?" On the basis of an extensive review of the literature, we suggest how growth research can advance by changing focus to growth mode (organic, acquisition, hybrid). Toward this end, we provide a research agenda that helps establish the types of questions that growth researchers can ask within this new focus.