This evolutionary perspective is focused at the organizational level of analysis rather than the individual decision maker, as it considers that adaptive evolution of organizations occurs through learning. Therefore, it is considered by some writers, such as Hannan and Freeman (1989), to be more applicable to organizational evolution than the alternative Darwinian theory which emphasises passive unchanging organisms being selected by the environment. At the level of the individual decision-maker, Lamarkian theory advances the hope that individuals can be leaders of evolution and adaptive change. The literature on leadership seems dominated by universal generalisations from "gurus" and prescriptions based on autobiographical accounts (see Blois, 1992; for a critical appraisal). Learning from the experiences of chief executives autobiographical accounts may be useful, but regard must be taken of the contexts where certain styles of leadership may be appropriate.

The process developmental perspective focuses on both organizational and individual learning. This learning is brought about by undertaking production processes that enable learning curve effects, or management processes such as planning. Thus a major focus of this paradigm is on so-called 'learning by doing' (Arrow, 1962). The developmental aspects can be emphasised by also experiencing and reflecting on the learning experience. The process developmental paradigm suggests that knowledge is the basis of successful strategy. Companies can learn to be successful by focusing on continual improvement over the long term. Learning can create a problem, however, because it can help one objective or one manager at the expense of others (Miller, 1996). There are also different types of learning such as experiential and structural learning (see Miller, 1996, for a review) and these have implications in regard to the development of different forms of knowledge.

The critique of traditional economics developed by Penrose (1959) is considered by many writers (e.g. Wernerfelt, 1984) to be the historical influence of the resource based view. This critique considers that traditional economic theory gives no notion to an internal process of development leading to cumulative movements of growth in firms. Thus for Penrose (1959) the firm was seen as a collection of productive tangible and intangible resources that provide services to production processes. From a resource based view, the focus of strategy should be on building difficult to imitate resources. Consequently, from this perspective companies should focus on difficult to imitate 'knowledge' resources such as knowledge of innovation, design and service, because these are more difficult to imitate than other resources.