Identifying Success Factors for Rapid Growth in SME E-commerce.

With high unemployment rates and major companies downsizing, SME policy has started to move center stage. The small business job-creation thesis can be traced to David Birch, who placed great emphasis on the job generation process of very rapidly growing businesses he termed Gazelles: "In fact most firms don't grow. Gazelles do. And that is only 3 percent of all small companies." This paper focuses on the baby gazelles of the Internet economy. It looks at critical success factors that fast growing E-commerce ventures need to take into account in the start-up phase. Based on the results of the EU project KITE, the article demonstrates links between critical success factors, and highlights the competitive advantage deriving from the application of a certain critical success factor. It will compare the critical success factors identified for high growth E-commerce ventures in the start-up phase in KITE with research into the success of high growth companies in general. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers