Hyper-Growth Among European SMEs: An Explorative Study

Abstract

High-growth firms deserve increasing attention from researchers, as they account for the largest amount of new job generation and contribute to wealth and general economic development. However, although it’s easy to conceive that firms rapidly growing hundreds of times their original size are far different from “usual” high-growth firms, literature has never explicitly investigated hyper growth as a different phenomenon with its own distinctive characteristics. This study tries to fill this gap by focusing on the factors distinguishing European hyper-growth firms from their lower-growth counterparts in order to suggest policies that could foster growth in European countries. Such firms are found to be younger (1) more involved in merger and acquisition (2) and listing (3) activities, to raise higher levels of debt (4) with a lower solvency (5) and rely more upon investments in fixed assets (6) Ownership (7) does not seem to play a distinctive role in distinguishing hyper growth firms.

Keywords: Hyper growth, Firm growth, Distinctive Features

JEL Classification: M10, M13, L21