Leverages firms used in growing paths

Abstract

Over 99% of enterprises in US and Japan are of small- or medium-size. Some will enjoy successful growth whereas most will suffer from poor growth, though all have started from being small. Analogy exists between those successfully growing start-ups and people who want to leverage the days spent in noted universities to a better job and to leverage the experiences in the better workplace to their further business career. Even in a world of business, it seems to be very essential in the growth of firm to leverage resources acquired. When searched in the Google.com, 'leverage' hits 2,640,000 pages and 'by leveraging' hits 220,000 pages. Also, words of 'leveraging' as abundant as stars in the sky are found in speeches, presentations and brochures. Nevertheless, there are no comprehensive frameworks or papers on the corporate strategy about leveraging, though a lot of papers refer to a portion of it through, for instance, resource-based view and financial leverage. Hence, attempted in this thesis was to develop a basic framework for leveraging business strategy, Leverage Driver Model (LDM) first. LDM consists of three parts: 1) product lever, 2) reputation driver, and 3) market lever, with consideration, with the consideration of dilution with time. Chapter 2 reviewed the past studies related to strategic leverages or related to growth paths of firms. In chapter 3, a basic mechanism of leverages in business was analyzed by introducing the Leverage Driver Model. In chapter 4, the scope of the LDM was expanded to applying itself to leveraging between products and between firms. Chapter 5 consists of case analyses on the practical leverage approaches some firms actually employed along their growing paths, and discussion was made to the

(cont.) attributes of leverages to the current success of some firms.