Purpose -The main objective of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of high growth and rapid internationalization characteristics in terms of: empirically characterizing growth deriving the profile of high-growth enterprises, exploring influential factors in high-growth, pointing out the factors that stimulate internationalization, presenting the combined influence of these factors in both the high-growth and early internationalizing enterprises, and formulating research-based policy recommendation for longer and higher growth rates and for decreasing the chances of demise in such younger firms. Design/methodology/approach -The authors have built a longitudinal sample of more than 1,140 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises that have grown at exceptionally high rates for at least five years at the earlier stages of their life-cycle, and even from inception in some cases. The data-base's origin is a popular Canadian business publication, the Canadian Business Magazine, which annually identifies and ranks growing firms in order to publish an annual list called "Profit 100: Canada's 200 fastest-growing companies". Findings -The findings of this analysis point to a rich population of high-growth enterprises with diverse ages, locations, sizes and revenues that manage to achieve high domestic and international growth for much longer and in ways not explained by the extant literature across time and industries. Research limitations/implications -This research carries the limitations of secondary data. In spite of its richness in terms of the high growth rates, annual lists offer a limited number of attributes per firm. It would be highly recommendable to use case studies in future research and broadly based surveys are necessary for deeper understanding of both the high and rapid growth and internationalization as well as the influential factors, including the internal characteristics of its agents, especially the management. Practical implications -This research indicates that rapid growing enterprises (RGEs) and rapid internationalizing enterprises (RIEs) are distinctive firms and are primarily small and medium-sized enterprises. Although the relative frequency of the appearance of various firm size-categories varies over time, RGEs are found across all the size and age categories. Although their total number as a proportion of all continuing firms in the economy is small, they are among the highly prominent and contributing corporate citizens. Social implications -This topic deserves the attention of scholars for the remarkable potential it offers to uncover the puzzle of growth, which is a time-dependent phenomenon. HGEs attain higher growths in shorter times; thus requiring a relatively shorter tracing of the growing firms. The topic also deserves the special attention of policy makers as HGEs generate employment, income, social benefits, taxes and wealth at much higher and faster rates than an average growing firm. Originality/value -The attractive features of HGEs' and RIEs' high-growth phenomenon...
Emerging economies, Internationalization, Knowledge, Learning, Organizational capabilities,
We focus in this paper on value propositions for external stakeholders created by new companies that are committed to scale, that is, to growing the amounts they are worth rapidly. For example, a company that grows its value from $0 to $1 billion in less than ten years is a company that scaled. Scaling company value is the guiding principle that these focal companies use to manage their internal affairs, as well as their interactions with external stakeholders. For these new companies, the value propositions that matter most are those that help them scale, and value proposition portfolios for their stakeholders are their most valuable assets. The purpose of this article is to identify (1) features that make a value proposition for an external stakeholder different from other new company resources, and (2) factors that make a value proposition beneficial to a new company committed to scale. Important contributions have been made to improve our understanding of the value proposition concept since it was first introduced in 1983 (Lanning & Michaels, 1988; Lanning, 2020). While these contributions have been widely discussed and cited (Goldring, 2017; Payne et al., 2017; Eggert et al., 2018; Wouters et al., 2018; Payne et al., 2020), we find it difficult to understand what the features are that make a value proposition distinct from other company resources, what the factors are that make a value proposition for external stakeholders valuable, and how new companies that wish to scale can costeffectively develop, communicate, and deliver value propositions. Most of the extant research on value propositions focuses on established companies, rather than new companies committed to scale. These studies implicitly assume that a company that can invest in refining or enhancing its value propositions already has an established customer base, distribution channels, One of the most valuable resources a company owns is the "portfolio of value propositions" to its diverse external stakeholders, such as customers, investors, and resource owners. In this article, we fill a gap in the value proposition literature by identifying features that make the value propositions of new companies different from other resources, along with factors that make them valuable. A value proposition is conceived as being what enables and improves business transactions between a new company and external stakeholders. We reason that two features in particular make value propositions of new companies distinct: (1) business transactions between a new company and one or more external stakeholders, and (2) investments to create and improve a new company's value propositions that enable business transactions. We provide a definition of "value proposition" and postulate that a value proposition will benefit a new company when it: (1) strengthens the new company's capabilities to scale; (2) increases demand for the new company's products and services; and (3) increases the number, diversity, and rapidity of external investments in the new company's value proposi...
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