Although growth is essential for the ultimate success of firms, existing strategy studies remain relatively silent on the effect of firm growth on firm success. This study advances our understanding by examining the relationship between firm growth rate and survival in digitalized era, focusing especially on how it is influenced by platform vs. non-platform business model. Examining this question in listed information-driven firms in the early 2000s, this study offers new insights on the growth strategy of firms. Confirming limited prior empirical findings, we found that even in a largely information-driven industry and in a traditional business model (i.e., non-platform), a faster growth rate can improve firm survival although, beyond a certain point, the relationship will reverse. However, in the case of platform business model, we show that the earlier U-shaped relationship between growth rate and failure will reverse to be more inverse-U-shaped although with a flatter curvature. We also show how firms adopting platform business model face a significantly increased failure risk on average. We detailed our various theoretical contributions in this emerging literature.
