An Outline of Corporate Strategy and Management Innovation.Discussion.

As known, the access to financial resources is a big issue for small and innovative companies. In fact, these firms must demonstrate their stakeholders to have financial strength and flexibility, in order to obtain consensus and reliance (Cornell & Shapiro, 1988). According to the pecking order theory (Narayanan, 1988; Myers & Majluf, 1984) a company should consider to increase in capital only if there was no other way to finance growth. Instead, in the Chapter 11 of the book, titled “New Technology-Based Firms In The New Millenium” (Vol. VIII) and published by Emerald (2010), we argue that going public could be an important growth opportunity for “research intensive” and well-managed companies. Although facing the credibility problem, going public could allow these companies to preserve opportunities to undertake future investments thanks to the financial flexibility it offers and the change in the financial environment it drives (Mahérault, 2000). We explore this issue with El.En. Group, an innovative Italian group, active in the design and production of high-tech laser sources and systems for medical, industrial, aesthetic, scientific and cultural heritage conservation applications. El.En. Group represents an interesting case-study to investigate because of its strategic and innovation model that comprises also the going public decision. El.En. was founded in 1981 by an university professor and one of his student as a small “research intensive” company. The company’s strategic model has been founded, since its establishment, on both product innovation and the presence of highly skilled human resources. In the vision of El.En. Group management, R&D activities and the innovation which results from them are considered as a great “growth enabler”. Indeed, innovation is strictly linked to the “entrepreneurial soul” (Drucker, 1985) of El.En. Group management. The success of El.En. is based, first of all, on an extraordinary product innovation capability. However, transforming new ideas which are at the roots of companies innovation do not deal only with products (Kanter, 2006). In particular, a significant kind of innovation is the management one (Hamel, 2006), which is represented, in El.En. Group, by a multidisciplinary approach to business activities, and, related to this, by the search and the merger of different high competencies. Thanks to the going public choice in 2000, El.En. obtained significant financial resources that allowed the company to increase its size, to invest in R&D to develop new laser applications and to strengthen its sales network in new markets. Although many high-tech companies throughout the world do not live through the “New Economy” crisis, the El.En. case study suggests that going public could be a relevant opportunity for a high tech, rapidly expanding, well-managed small company that needs to obtain liquidity and to improve its visibility and corporate image. Today, El.En. Group is the leader in Europe and one of the most relevant international players in the production and trading of laser for medical and industrial sector. Furthermore, recently this Group has listed one of its US branches on the NASDAQ Exchange, confirming the trust in the going public benefits.