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"growth firms"
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Gazelles as job creators: a survey and interpretation of the evidence
It is often claimed that small and young firms account for a disproportionately large share of net employment growth. We conduct a meta-analysis of the empirical evidence regarding whether net employment growth rather is generated by a few rapidly growing firms—so-called Gazelles—that are not necessarily small and young. Gazelles are found to be outstanding job creators. They create all or a large share of new net jobs. On average, Gazelles are younger and smaller than other firms, but it is young age more than small size that is associated with rapid growth. Gazelles exist in all industries. They seem not to be overrepresented in high-technology industries, but there is some evidence that they are overrepresented in services.
Journal Article
Catching Gazelles with a Lasso
We investigate whether our limited ability to predict high-growth firms (HGF) is because previous research has used a restricted set of explanatory variables, and in particular because there is a need for explanatory variables with high variation within firms over time. To this end, we apply “big data” techniques (i.e., LASSO; Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator) to predict HGFs in comprehensive datasets on Croatian and Slovenian firms. Firms with low inventories, higher previous employment growth, and higher short-term liabilities are more likely to become HGFs. Pseudo-R² statistics of around 10% indicate that HGF prediction remains a challenging exercise.
Journal Article
High-growth firms and innovation: an empirical analysis for Spanish firms
This paper analyses the effect of R&D investment on firm growth. We use an extensive sample of Spanish manufacturing and service firms. The database comprises diverse waves of Spanish Community Innovation Survey and covers the period 2004-2008. First, a probit model corrected for sample selection analyses the role of innovation on the probability of being a high-growth firm (HGF). Second, a quantile regression technique is applied to explore the determinants of firm growth. Our database shows that a small number of firms experience fast growth rates in terms of sales or employees. Our results reveal that R&D investments positively affect the probability of becoming a HGF. However, differences appear between manufacturing and service firms. Finally, when we study the impact of R&D investment on firm growth, quantile estimations show that internal R&D presents a significant positive impact for the upper quantiles, while external R&D shows a significant positive impact up to the median.
Journal Article
High-growth firms and productivity: evidence from the United Kingdom
There is considerable evidence that highgrowth firms (HGFs) contribute significantly to employment and economic growth. However, the literature so far does not adequately explore the link between HGFs and productivity. This paper investigates the empirical link between total factor productivity (TFP) growth and HGFs, defined in terms of sales growth, in the United Kingdom over the period 2001-2010, by examining two related research questions. Firstly, does higher TFP growth lead to HGF status and secondly, does HGF experience help firms achieve faster TFP growth? Our findings reveal that firms in both the manufacturing and services sectors are more likely to become HGFs when they exhibit higher TFP growth. In addition, firms that have had HGF experience tend to enjoy faster TFP growth following the high-growth episodes. Policy implications are drawn based on the self-reinforcing process of the high-growth phenomenon that is revealed by our results.
Journal Article
Persistent high-growth firms in China’s manufacturing
This article explores the association between persistence of high-growth and crucial dimensions of firm structure and performance (productivity, profits, investment patterns, innovation, and financial structures) to shed light on what makes a persistent high-growth firm. We employ a multidimensional definition of a high-growth firm that simultaneously accounts for growth of sales and employment, and design an empirical strategy that seeks to capture the “long-run” ability of high-growth firms to replicate their high-growth performance over time. Exploiting a large panel covering the period of the China’s miracle, we find that none of the considered firm attributes stands out as distinctive feature of persistent highgrowth. This finding casts doubts on the long-run contribution of high-growth firms, in turn challenging the long-run effectiveness of policies supporting the creation and expansion of such firms.
Journal Article
How leadership factors impact different entrepreneurship phases: an analysis with PLS-SEM
This research work empirically contributes to the entrepreneurial leadership field by analysing how certain combinations of leadership factors impact entrepreneurship in both its launch and consolidation phases. Two relational models are proposed to study whether entrepreneurial leadership factors are positively related to different entrepreneurial activity process stages. The first analyses the effect on the venture’s launch and start-up phases, and the second examines the impact on the entrepreneurship consolidation stage. Utilising data from 50 countries of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a quantitative partial least squares structural equation method was employed to validate the proposed models. The main conclusion was that the use of some leadership capabilities has an unequal influence on entrepreneurship during its life cycle. This study contributes to the field in two ways: we firstly show that leadership factors are contextual, and their contribution depends on the stage of the entrepreneurial process in which the activity is located; secondly, this research reveals that the development of leadership factors, such as self-efficacy, networking, vision and innovative behaviour, positively condition the start-up and launch phases of entrepreneurship. The outcomes of this research demonstrate significant theoretical and empirical implications by bridging the existing gaps in the niche of entrepreneurial leadership factors.
Journal Article
My first employee: an empirical investigation
The challenge for solo entrepreneurs to add their first employee is arguably the single biggest growth event facing any growing firm. To understand how this event affects performance, and the antecedents of hiring, we analyse Danish matched employer–employee data. Those who hire enjoy superior sales outcomes in subsequent years, while the dispersion in profits increases. Furthermore, those that hire enjoy faster sales growth in the previous year, suggesting that sales growth precedes the first hire. Finally, we show that founders with a stronger profile in terms of education and previous income are more likely to increase profits, while the characteristics of the employee are less important. The latter finding is important from a job creation perspective, in light of the suggested sorting of more marginalized employees into new and established firms.
Journal Article
High-Growth Entrepreneurial Firms in Africa: A Quantile Regression Approach
This article analyses the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of 11 Sub-Saharan African countries. The focus of the article is on identifying those entrepreneurs' attributes and firm characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of highgrowth firms in these countries. To this end, we use a quantile regression, which provides a more complete estimation of the growth distribution of firms conditional on different attributes. The results indicate that firms that engage in product innovation, have their own transport means and are connected to the internet through their own website are especially characterized by higher growth rates and also display a distribution of growth rates skewed to the right, hosting a higher number of high-growth firms. The effect of the last two variables, which relate to distance-bridging modes of infrastructure, points to the self-reinforcing growth effects they generate in creating wider input and output markets. Education raises growth opportunities by affecting the lower quantiles, but it does not appear to influence the upper quantiles. The estimated conditional growth distributions for the technology-intensive machinery and electronics sectors show more extreme tails and a lower mean in comparison to the traditional industries, indicating the more risky nature of doing business in these industries.
Journal Article
Declining business dynamism in Belgium
Using 30 years of data from all for-profit firms incorporated in Belgium, we show that business dynamism and entrepreneurship have been declining over recent decades. This decline set in around the year 2000 following a decade of declining start-up rates. We also observe a decreasing share of young firms that become high-growth firms and more importantly a declining propensity for small (not necessarily young) firms to experience fast growth. Interestingly, a similar decline in business dynamism occurred in the USA, where firms face a far less rigid institutional environment than in Belgium. These remarkable similarities suggest that global trends rather than country-specific changes are at the basis of this evolution. We show evidence that points to the role of ICT intensity in explaining the secular decline in business dynamism.
Journal Article