What about SMEs? Investigating Growth Patterns in Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Why does growth stall in high-growth potential, second-stage companies, and can we intervene to overcome this? This research seeks to address why growth rates so often peter out in adolescent firms, and why so few make it to “grownup” status. The experimental trial will also seek to identify and test specific policy interventions to reinvigorate growth in these situations. The project will have three phases. In the first phase, a new theory on why growth stalls in high-growth potential, second-stage companies will be developed through inductive investigation in a series of interviews and ethnography. In the second phase the robustness of the ideas developed in phase one will be tested empirically. The last phase will consist of a RCT, based on the robust evidence from the first two research phases, designed to test an approach to overcome the growth barriers.