Symbiosis

Abstract This article studies the long-term performance of entrepreneur firms by paying more attention to their external environments. It argues that prior research on the long-term survival and growth of entrepreneur firms has paid insufficient attention to the effects of external environmental factors. As a result, it remains unclear why only a small percentage of newly established entrepreneur firms can survive for more than 3 years (citation), and an even smaller percentage of the firms can achieve sustainable growth over a longer period of time. To address this research gap, we review the literature on symbiotic strategies in ownership, corporate governance, marketing and new product development, based on which we highlight the importance of symbionts in the sustainable growth of the resource-constrained entrepreneur firms and develop a conceptual model showing the relationship between symbiosis-orientation and its consequences for entrepreneur firms (Figure 1)