Policy Briefing

The UK’s high growth firms and their resilience over the Great Recession

ERC Policy Briefing

Associated Themes
  • Business Growth

During the last decade High-Growth Firms (HGFs) – sometimes referred to as ’Scale-Ups’ – have increasingly become an established feature of the UK business policy landscape. Indeed, HGFs are mentioned in the government’s recently published policy document ”Building our Industrial Strategy”, and are now considered sufficiently important that the Minister for Small Business has taken on the role of ”Scale-Up Champion”.
Whilst we know something of the characteristics of these firms – about their age, size, sector and location – we know relatively little about the dynamics of the HGF population as it evolves over time. For the most part attention is focused simply on the annual count which, as we shall see, is not an entirely appropriate measure of HGF activity.

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