Persistence, survival, and growth: a closer look at 20 years of fast-growing firms in Austria

Myth-busting and entrepreneurship policy: the case of high growth firms

“…2 Irrespective of the definition and measurement criteria used to identify HGFs, it is important to note that rapid growth is highly episodic in nature (Garnsey et al 2006) and thus the population of HGFs is constantly fluctuating. High growth is rarely persistent in firms (Nicholls-Nixon 2005;Hölzl 2014) and therefore high growth in one period of time does not guarantee sustained high growth (Coad et al 2013;Daunfeldt and Halvarsson 2015). Hence, it is crucial to bear in mind that high growth is not a 'characteristic' of a sub-set of firms, but rather a state that some firms temporarily experience (Brown and Mawson 2013).…”

“…It is therefore essential to reiterate that rapid growth is rarely sustained in the longer term (Hölzl 2014). Indeed, the reverse is often the case: a period of rapid growth can often jeopardise the long-term stability of some ventures (Delmar et al 2013) especially those firms run by less experienced entrepreneurs or top management teams (TMTs) (Barringer et al 2005;Nicholls-Nixon 2005).…”

Persistent high-growth firms in China’s manufacturing

“…Some studies even dispute that persistence in high-growth itself exists in the data, echoing theories of firm growth as essentially stemming from luck (Barney, 1997). Hölzl (2014) and Daunfeldt and Halvarsson (2015) show that high-growth firms are "one-hit wonders" that do not replicate their high-growth over time, while other studies (Delmar et al, 2003;Capasso et al, 2014) show that persistent outperformers and "super relative growers" coexist with "bouncing firms" and "erratic one-shot growers". To our knowledge at least, and Guarascio and Tamagni (2016) are the only works addressing whether persistently high-growth firms differ in terms of structural characteristics, as compared to firms that display short-lived "spurts" of high-growth.…”

“…But we know much less about the relations between high-growth and firms' highly heterogenous entrepreneurial orientations as revealed (and measured in this study) by their structural characteristics. Even less attention is devoted to investigate the determinants of the persistence of high-growth, as indeed there is even a debate on the very existence of persistently high-growing firms (Hölzl, 2014;Daunfeldt and Halvarsson, 2015). One exception is the recent study by on Italian, Spanish, French and UK firms, who find that the few firms showing persistent high-growth patterns do not systematically differ from "simple" high-growth firms in terms of crucial dimensions of structural characteristics and performance, such as efficiency, profitability, financial conditions and innovativeness.…”

“…In order to provide a multidimensional assessment of the growth process occurring within firms (Delmar et al, 2003;Hölzl, 2014), our definition of high-growth firms encompasses both employment and sales growth. We identify high-growth firms as those firms in the top 20% of the three-years average growth rates distribution in terms of at least one of the two growth measures.…”