Project 1.1.3: SGO (High Growth Companies)

Project Team

Prof. Bart Clarysse (project leader), Prof. Sophie Manigart and PhD student

Content

High growth companies are of great importance for the development of an economy. To gain a better understanding of how these companies realize extreme high growth, the research groups of Professors Clarysse and Manigart have started to develop a new database in the previous policy research centre STOOI, that comprises the 1% fastest growing companies in Belgium. So far, only public information, namely the financial accounts, is included in the database. The goal is to add detailed information on the resources which these companies have cumulated, their capabilities that have led to growth and the product market information about the segments in which they compete.

Methodology

Since growth is multidimensional in nature (Delmar, 2003), we made use of multiple growth measures in order to identify the fastest growing Flemish companies. The database contains all companies in the top 1% of at least one growth indicator (sales, revenues, value added, total assets or cash flow), according to absolute or relative growth, for a minimum of two years, between 1997 and 2004. Growth is calculated as a moving average over three years, hence the companies in the database have realized growth over at least four years. This resulted in a database with 2106 companies in the Flemish/Brussels Capital Region that have realised high growth between 1997 and 2004. The database comprises companies that exist over the ten-year period, companies that have been started and companies that have disappeared in that period. The database currently contains financial statement data of all companies over the ten-year period.

The main goal in 2008 is to start completing the database with data on the innovative activities, the dynamic capabilities, the resources and the characteristics of the product/markets in which they compete. This information does not exist in secondary databases and has to be collected through a primary data collection effort. The relatively small geographical size of Flanders makes it possible to collect the data through personal interviews, allowing for high response rates1. The interviews will be based on a structured questionnaire.