This study is about rapid growth in SMEs from an entrepreneur’s or manager’s perspective and it aim to find practices in order to enable and drive rapid growth. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how owner-led small businesses can be managed in order to maximize the profitable long term growth of the company. In order to understand this we have had a pragmatic perspective and have attempted to find practices that drive and enable fast growth. The study consists of an extensive literature study on the subject and five case studies of Swedish rapid growth companies. Each case study consisted of gathering secondary data and conducting 1-4 interviews at each company with Entrepreneurs, CEOs, CFOs and Sales managers. The result from the literature study and the case studies is a model for growth that is shown below. The model consists of eight different areas that are important to drive or enable growth in companies.  Each area in the model was identified as a driver, enabler or blocker of growth for each case study.   The conclusions from this thesis are five propositions regarding rapid growth that is listed below. ü  Proposition 1: All the areas in our analysis model can either be a blocker, an enabler or a driver of growth. ü  Proposition 2: It is possible to deliberately transform an area from a blocker, or enabler, into a driver of growth. ü  Proposition 3: It is important to make the business scalable so no area becomes a blocker of growth. ü  Proposition 4: The three areas, time monopoly, sales, and leadership could be considered as primary drivers for growth. ü  Proposition 5: The two areas culture and expansion could be considered as primary enablers of growth. The findings from this study are highly valuable for managers or entrepreneurs that want to increase growth of their companies.

Submitted by Mia Saetre Bernhardsen (21288@novasbe.pt) on 2016-11-30T12:04:23Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Thesis Mia Bernhardsen.pdf: 945739 bytes, checksum: 2dd70ca4ba46c57038cd5d7107f42d03 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Josineide da Silva Santos Locatelli (josineide.locatelli@fgv.br) on 2016-11-30T13:53:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Thesis Mia Bernhardsen.pdf: 945739 bytes, checksum: 2dd70ca4ba46c57038cd5d7107f42d03 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-30T17:27:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MPGI Thesis Mia Bernhardsen.pdf: 945739 bytes, checksum: 2dd70ca4ba46c57038cd5d7107f42d03 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-11-03 / Within the field of international business and entrepreneurship, the following project investigates an underexplored topic, namely the post- establishment performance of maturing Born Globals relative to younger Born Globals in Hispanic America. The scope is delimited to viewing performance as of sales growth in the manufacturing sector. A quantitative approach is applied, where firm- level secondary data from 14 Latin American countries is analyzed using multiple regression with interaction terms. The results illustrate that maturing Born Globals tend to have lower sales growth compared to younger Born Globals, while failing to detect that product innovation affect younger and maturing Born Globals differently. Access to finance as a moderator appear to be insignificant in the full sample, while the findings in the Peruvian context illustrate that the sales growth of maturing Peruvian Born Globals is more negatively affected by difficulties in obtaining finance relative to their younger counterparts. / No âmbito dos campos de conhecimento -negócios internacionais e empreendedorismo- o seguinte projeto visa investigar um tema pouco explorado: o desempenho pós-estabelecimento de Born Globals maduras em relação com o de empresas Born Globals jovens na América hispânica. O escopo é limitado ao crescimento de vendas na indústria manufatureira. Foi utilizada uma abordagem quantitativa com informacão de 14 países latino-americanos ao nivel secundário das empresas, a través de regressao multipla com interação de termos. Os resultados mostram que Born Globals em maturidade tendem a ter um crescimento de vendas menor em comparação com jovens born globals. No entanto, não foi detectado uma evolução diferente no que toca a inovação do produto entre as empresas anteriormente referidas. O acesso a financiamento como um moderador parecem ser insignificantes na amostra total, entretanto os resultados no contexto peruano ilustram que o crescimento das vendas dos Born Globals em maturidade é afetado de forma negativa por dificuldades na obtenção de financiamento em relação às contrapartes jovens.

Over the recent decade the world has seen an increase in businesses launching new, or changing theirbusiness model to, digital platforms. New and established businesses are flocking to digital platformsin order to evolve their business model and keep up with advancements in technology, such as cloudcomputing, which enables commerce and communication on a much faster and more streamlinedlevel. Digital platforms with two-sided markets often face fierce competition from market incumbentswhich benefit from traditional supply-side economies of scale, as well as from other digital platforms.Therefore, the competitive strategy adopted at market launch and under operations will have a greatimpact on the platform performance in terms of firm financial performance.This study is divided into two parts and is performed with the objective to gain insight into thecompetitive strategies adopted by digital platform businesses with two-sided markets, and how suchstrategic decisions may be informed in favor of profitability. The first part investigates the influence ofinternal factors, such as debt ratio, quick ratio, sales growth, and capital turnover ratio, on the firmfinancial performance (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets inthe Nordics. The second part investigates the relationship between the firm financial performance(measured by return on assets) of digital platform businesses with two-sided markets after launch andthe type of strategy adopted. Subsequently, two hypotheses are presented. Subsequently, twohypotheses are presented. A panel data regression model is developed to evaluate these relationships,allowing the authors to test the null hypotheses. The data set used in the panel data regression modelcomprise an unbalanced sample of 27 companies who have launched their platforms in Norway,Sweden, and Denmark. Financial data was gathered in the form of return on assets (dependentvariable), capital turnover ratio, quick ratio, debt ratio, and sales growth (explanatory variables).These companies were grouped depending on which strategy was adopted on market launch and underearly operations. These strategies are subsidy, seeding and marquee users, micro market launch andpiggybacking (categorical ‘dummy’ variables).Studying the firm financial performance of businesses which adopt digital platforms will help us tobetter understand the efficacy of strategies adopted and how these strategies impact financialperformance. Both null hypotheses tested may be partially rejected. The authors conclude that theinternal factors debt ratio, quick ratio, and sales growth have a significant influence on theprofitability (measured by return on assets) of digital platforms with two-sided markets in the Nordics.The influence of the internal factor capital turnover ratio on profitability is statistically insignificant.Quick ratio has a positive significant influence on profitability, whereas debt ratio and sales growthhave a negative influence. The authors also conclude that companies which have business modelsallowing them to adopt a subsidy strategy yields stronger profitability than those which adopt otherstrategies. Companies which entice seed & marquee users to their platform as a strategy yields thesecond strongest profitability. Companies which choose a micro market launch strategy yield theweakest profitability. The authors of this study will not draw conclusions on the efficacy of theadoption of a piggybacking strategy on profitability due to the limited number of observationsattributed to the piggybacking dataset.Future studies may expand upon this research with the inclusion of a wider catchment of businesses,as well as the inclusion of a wider data set to include other geographical locations and improvestatistical significance of the data set. An improvement to the study may also be to analyze thecorrelation between the strength of competitors upon market entry and the efficacy of the strategiesadopted.