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In this paper, we examine how board of directors’ expertise influences post-entry performance of startups and diversifying entrants that compete in an emerging market. Using a sample of firms in the U.S. wireless communications service industry from 1983 to 1998, we find that firms’ post-entry growth increases with the post-entry firm-specific board experience of directors, but decreases with the inherited pre-entry firm-specific board experience of directors. To balance firm-specific board expertise, firms also need externally-developed director expertise. Here we find that outside directors’ intra-industry managerial experience stimulates post-entry growth while their intra-industry directorial experience reduces it. Firms also benefit from having true industry outsiders who are experienced in other industry domains (but have no experience in the current industry domain). Thus, boards with a mix of directors with post-entry firm-specific board expertise and complementary other industry expertise are most fitting for the governance of post-entry venture growth.

Edith Penrose's (1959) classic book, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm, made a substantial impact on strategic management research, especially in the context of the resource-based view of the firm, and the ripple effects of her impact continue to unfold today in various disciplines. The book serves as a remarkably rich source of inspiration for scholarly research and a generative source of ideas, which are waiting to be further developed. In this paper, we examine Penrose's (1959) classic and provide: (1) the process by which this book came about; (2) a summary of its key ideas; (3) the subsequent impact of the book, in which we focus on mathematical models; and (4) a discussion of some of the research lessons learned from this exemplar of engaged scholarship. We invite management science and operations scholars to discover the rich scientific world of Edith Penrose and experience the product and process of her research creativity

Public organizations are relatively understudied in the strategic entrepreneurship literature. In this article, we submit that public organizations are usefully analyzed as entities that create and capture value in both the private and public sectors and that a capabilities lens sheds important new insights on their behavior. As they try to create and capture value, public organizations can act entrepreneurially by creating or leveraging bundles of capabilities, which may then shape subsequent entrepreneurial action. Such processes can involve complex interactions among public and private actors. For example, public organizations often partner with private firms to produce existing products, create new products, and establish new markets which, in turn, generate new capabilities for both public and private actors. Yet such coevolutionary processes are not guaranteed to create value, and capabilities acquired in the pursuit of public interests may, over time, enable activities that damage those same interests. We show how a capabilities approach helps explain the nature and evolution of public organizations and we apply this approach to a series of cases on the growth and diversification of public organizations, the private provision of public goods, and related issues. Copyright © 2013 Strategic Management Society. © 2013 Strategic Management Society.

This study focuses on Penrose’s resource based approach and under explored insights that are of high relevance in moving strategic management and international business research forward. Specifically, we review studies that discuss the relevance and links of Penrose’s resource based approach to other theoretical perspectives, as well as studies that focus on the determinants and consequences of firm level growth. Based on this review, we then suggest future directions, which elaborate on some of the Penrose inspired under researched topics that merit further research attention.

Proper brain function requires the assembly and function of diverse populations of neurons and glia. Single cell gene expression studies have mostly focused on characterization of neuronal cell diversity; however, recent studies have revealed substantial diversity of glial cells, particularly astrocytes. To better understand glial cell types and their roles in neurobiology, we built a new suite of adeno-associated viral (AAV)-based genetic tools to enable genetic access to astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. These oligodendrocyte and astrocyte enhancer-AAVs are highly specific (usually > 95% cell type specificity) with variable expression levels, and our astrocyte enhancer-AAVs show multiple distinct expression patterns reflecting the spatial distribution of astrocyte cell types. To provide the best glial-specific functional tools, several enhancer-AAVs were: optimized for higher expression levels, shown to be functional and specific in rat and macaque, shown to maintain specific activity in epilepsy where traditional promoters changed activity, and used to drive functional transgenes in astrocytes including Cre recombinase and acetylcholine-responsive sensor iAChSnFR. The astrocyte-specific iAChSnFR revealed a clear reward-dependent acetylcholine response in astrocytes of the nucleus accumbens during reinforcement learning. Together, this collection of glial enhancer-AAVs will enable characterization of astrocyte and oligodendrocyte populations and their roles across species, disease states, and behavioral epochs.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in older adults. Neuropathological and imaging studies have demonstrated a progressive and stereotyped accumulation of protein aggregates, but the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms driving AD progression and vulnerable cell populations affected by disease remain coarsely understood. The current study harnesses single cell and spatial genomics tools and knowledge from the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network to understand the impact of disease progression on middle temporal gyrus cell types. We used image-based quantitative neuropathology to place 84 donors spanning the spectrum of AD pathology along a continuous disease pseudoprogression score and multiomic technologies to profile single nuclei from each donor, mapping their transcriptomes, epigenomes, and spatial coordinates to a common cell type reference with unprecedented resolution. Temporal analysis of cell-type proportions indicated an early reduction of Somatostatin-expressing neuronal subtypes and a late decrease of supragranular intratelencephalic-projecting excitatory and Parvalbumin-expressing neurons, with increases in disease-associated microglial and astrocytic states. We found complex gene expression differences, ranging from global to cell type-specific effects. These effects showed different temporal patterns indicating diverse cellular perturbations as a function of disease progression. A subset of donors showed a particularly severe cellular and molecular phenotype, which correlated with steeper cognitive decline. We have created a freely available public resource to explore these data and to accelerate progress in AD research at SEA-AD.org., Competing Interests: Additional Declarations: There is NO Competing Interest.