The Gazelle Theory

[victor steinbok]

Fox News in the last half-hour, as well as other media outlets, have lately
been touting "gazelles"--small, fast-growing businesses. It's not hard to
trace the origins.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20010515/22613.html
The Gazelle Theory: Are some small companies more equal than others? By John
Case |  Inc., May 15, 2001
>If you want a lot of new jobs, you want a lot of the fast-growing
entrepreneurial businesses known as "gazelles."

In all probability, this is one of the words/terms whose origin can be
traced to a precise publication, although it's progenitor likely used it in
speeches long before publishing it.

>From the same Inc. article (sidecolumn):

> Gazelles? Gazelles? Some years back, David Birch of the research company
Cognetics conferred that name on fast-growing companies, thereby
distinguishing them from the "mice" on Main Street and the "elephants" on
the Fortune 500. The name stuck. We're looking for "gazelles," the president
of an incubator in Tucson recently told the Arizona Daily Star -- companies
that can "run fast and jump high."
>
> Birch's definition, also widely adopted: a gazelle has to grow at least
20% a year for four years, from a base of at least $100,000 in revenues --
in effect, at least doubling in size over that four-year period. A modest
hurdle? Not really. By Birch's count, only about 352,000 companies qualify.
That's only about one out of every 16 companies with employees.

Gazelles appear to have taken off, but not the rest of the bestiary. More
recent estimates also suggest that "gazelles" account for just under 5% of
small businesses--a number smaller than 1 in 16 (and this can't be just the
difference between "companies with employees" and all companies, because
sole proprietorships are quite numerous).

VS-)

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