Acquisitions are a powerful tool to achieve growth, enter new markets, and expand capabilities. Yet research into the decision to acquire, and its implementation process, has predominantly focused on large established firms. Little is known about what a small high-growth firm requires to pursue an acquisition, what is it looking for in a target firm and when is acquisitive growth first expected to occur. The firms were not older than five years, and at a company stage at, or earlier than, series A funding round. The investigation revealed that small high-growth firms require organizational strategies, available resources and organizational systems. These types of firms are looking for targets that can provide knowledge, human resources and customer bases.  The earliest moment a small high-growth firm expects to acquire a target is in the seed round, only if the target has a low price and could bring a lot of value, otherwise the series A funding stage is when an acquisition will most likely take place. This observation opens the door to new ideas regarding how such firms may try to behave like large firms, yet are restricted in their capacity, due to a conscious lack of resources to do so.

This dissertation explores the topic of strategy formation in high-growth SMEs. High-growth SMEs represent the growth and job creation engine of an economy; however, little has been understood on how strategy forms and develops in high-growth SMEs. The focus on large organisations has led to a literature gap regarding strategy making in SMEs (Wisener and Millett, 2012). "There is a need for deeper understanding" of strategy formation processes in SMEs (Lofving et al., 2014) and "research focusing on questions such as how firms grow [...] has been neglected." (Wright and Stigliani, 2012) The research objectives are: to understand how strategy forms and develops in high-growth SMEs; to develop a framework for the qualitative study of strategy formation processes in high-growth SMEs; and to identify enablers and barriers related to strategy formation processes in high-growth SMEs. A multiple, retrospective case-study methodology has been used. Extensive case studies built on in-depth interviews with management have been compiled to understand the complexity of the studied phenomenon. The research develops two qualitative research tools based on the literature review: a preliminary framework and an assessment matrix to study strategy formation processes. Furthermore, the research introduces a new approach to strategy charting. The key contributions of this research are as follows: • A holistic view of how strategy processes in high-growth SMEs form and develop is provided. New insights into the structures, characteristics, and other aspects of strategy formation processes have been articulated. • A framework for the qualitative study of strategy formation processes in high-growth SMEs has been developed by applying the cross-case analysis findings to the preliminary framework. • New enablers and barriers related to strategy formation processes in high-growth SMEs have been identified. New findings on the role of strategy formation in achieving growth have been outlined. This dissertation narrows the gap between strategy formation in academia and real life by providing practitioners with detailed case studies which can be used as guidelines for the development of strategy formation processes. The research can also help SMEs' managers to tackle challenges encountered in strategy formation and to support catalysts which enable strategy formation. This dissertation provides exploratory findings into a phenomenon which has been limitedly researched. Further research should seek to generalise and test the findings on additional SMEs.