The process of creating, accumulating, and developing organizational capabilities over a long period of time was the key factor contributing to the growth of the Italian state oil company AGIP (later ENI) during the 1950s and 1960s. The entrepreneurial activity of Enrico Mattei, who headed the company from 1945 to 1962, relied on a complex set of specific capabilities and knowledge embedded in the group of specialists who were in charge of performing operational tasks. The paper focuses on the process for adapting that pool of capabilities during the transition from the core business of natural gas, developed immediately after World War II, to the business of oil prospecting abroad, which began in the latter half of the 1950s.