Defying the industry trend: factors for countering the negative impacts of operating in declining industries

Downturns are part of the industrial life-cycle; all industries suffer from fluctuations in the demand for their products and services imposing serious challenges for firms operating within. Yet not all firms are affected equally during industrial downturns. In fact, the observation of firms operating in declining industries, which not only manage to survive but over-perform against the odds, reveals that there are ways to defy negative trends and rise above them. In this book, we examine the managerial, human and social capital attributes as well as the strategies of 25 high-growth SMEs operating in long declining industries in the UK.