As we contemplated hosting the “Hitting the Growth Wall” conference at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, and editing this book, we observed that little had actually been written about organic growth in recent years. Work by Penrose (1995) and Chandler (1962) had set the stage for viewing growth from an evolutionary economics perspective. Much of the work that followed then shifted into research on organizational resources and the linkage between strategy and structure. However, the most dominant growth-related theme that exercised researchers and practitioners alike was the study of innovation processes and outcomes. Our understanding of innovation grew dramatically from the 1980s as the topic took on increasing practical and theoretical significance. This literature covered a broad range of topics and concepts, extending from paradigm shifts (Anderson & Tushman, 1990), to corporate entrepreneurship (Hitt, Ireland, & Tuggle, this volume, ch. ; Stopford & Baden-Fuller, 1994), intelligent organizations (Quinn, 1992), mastering change (Kanter, 1983), and time-based competition (Eisenhardt, 1989). Most of these were ideas in good currency, enjoying unparalleled popularity among managers and envious citation rates among scholars. Surely such a wealth of information signaled the arrival of a dominant theoretical model for the role of organizations in creating innovation. But what about growth?

Whereas each book or journal article provided its own valuable contribution, we were disappointed to discover that no dominant theoretical perspective had emerged to integrate the multiple streams of innovation into a more comprehensive and substantive view of growth.

Through much of the 1990s, corporations realized extraordinary growth in revenues and earnings. As this trend unfolded, senior executives began to experience significant pressure from financial analysts, shareholders, and others for continued growth as measured by quarterly reports of performance against forecasts. In the aftermath of the technology bubble, and as the accounting and financial scandals of 2001 and 2002 surfaced, it was apparent that a portion of the earlier reported growth was the product of a mix of widespread earnings management and financial engineering, serial acquisitions, and the utilization of accounting and tax manipulations to create specific financial results. The vitality and substance of those results are now being questioned in various regulatory, legal, and legislative forums. In other cases, firms may have developed innovative strategies or products that led to high growth, but as the firm matured or approached market saturation, growth slowed. For a range of reasons, then, many firms have “hit the wall,” experiencing flat revenues after an extended period of high growth.

As a result, executives in many companies now struggle with an increased emphasis on internally generated, or organic, growth, which is qualitatively different in the substance and character of the key tasks central to success, from growth via acquisition. As Rita McGrath notes in Chapter 9, with a sample of over 900 large companies she examined, approximately 6% of all companies who were growing at even a modest rate overall could be accurately described as growing organically.