The Growth of Entrepreneurial Companies:

Despite the growing prominence of entrepreneurship, understanding its key features and development stages lags. Mainstream media coverage frequently emphasizes and most unusual successes, creating misconceptions about the nature and evolution of most successful entrepreneurial firms. In theory, entrepreneurship includes several sub-disciplines including small business, businesses owned by women, high technology start ups, home –based businesses, and family-owned businesses. Businesses in these groupings have received the most study.

However, relatively little research focuses on the distinctive features of growth companies. This is important because in many respects, entrepreneurial companies are indistinguishable from small businesses until they enter a “growth” phase, during which they are transformed into something almost entirely different. An entrepreneurial firm is one that grows large enough to influence the environment and thus become a pacesetter. Yet we cannot use growth for entrepreneurial companies and the individuals who make them thrive. During the same, entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Andy Groves, Steve Jobs, Meg Whitman and Jeff Bezos captured the public imagination and dominated the business news.

The reasons for this trend in entrepreneurship are clear. Each year, at least 700,000 new businesses are started in United States, and, of these, a small portion turn out to be the fast growth companies that propel the economy forward. Each year, this small set of businesses creates a disproportionate share of the new jobs and fuels the economy in numerous ways. In fact, in the United States, 5 percent of old jobs are destroyed every three months with a proportionate increase in new jobs.