Growth and Growth Management

Abstract

Innovative and, in particular, rapidly growing enterprises generate new jobs, new products and services or even new markets [for the role in industry evolution played by newly emerging populations of firms see, e.g., Aldrich (1999)]. Such enterprises strive to build and improve their market position, increase their turnover and may also achieve rising profits. With this in mind, growing enterprises are not only of central importance in relation to the development of an economy [Carree/Turik (2003)], but also from the microeconomic perspective of business management. Numerous European enterprises, which were founded on the basis of innovations with bright prospects for the future, have exploited the entrepreneurial opportunities their founders perceived and achieved profitable growth, such as, for example, the Dutch-German supplier of biomedical and technological equipment Qiagen [Kock (2002)]. Nevertheless, the number of fast growing enterprises (gazelles, see below) is demonstrably lower in Europe than in the USA [Twaalfhoven (2005)]. The reasons are numerous and manifold, and their origin lies probably not only in cultural differences. Differentiated empirical research studies are still required to explore the phenomenon of young enterprise growth, especially in the international setting.