In Search of Scale-ups: Empirical Analysis

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter takes our empirical definition of scale-up to the data: Swedish register data on over 700,000 firms for the period 1997–2001. 1.28% of firms meet the HGF criteria. Among these HGFs, it is rare for a firm to satisfy all 7 scale-up conditions (in line with the idea of ‘too many exceptions’). 25.89% of HGFs satisfy 5 or more of the 7 conditions for scale-ups, while 60.75% of HGFs satisfy 4 out of 7 conditions. Our analysis highlighted how missing values can cause problems when investigating which HGFs are scale-ups.