RISIS policy makers' sessions: Fast growing mid-sized firms in Europe. Evidence from the RISIS-Cheetah database

On 24 October 2019, the Club of associated research organisations (Clora) of Brussels hosted the first RISIS  Policymakers' Session focused on European mid-size firms, with a half-day presentation and discussion around  evidence from RISIS Cheetah data.
Massimiliano Guerini, representative of Politecnico di Milano (Polimi) in RISIS project and Cheetah access manager and Roberto Camerani, Research Fellow at Science Policy Research Unit of University of Sussex, presented a category of firms that may be relevant for policy debate: Cheetah firms. 

Fast growing firms have received considerable attention by academic scholars and policymakers for their crucial role in creating new jobs and employment. However, firm performance appears to be highly skewed, and most firms do not experience fast or high growth, determinants of high growth are difficult to predict, and the high growth tends not to persist over time. Furthermore, have been studied several characteristics of  these firms, including their size, age, sector, or country.

Cheetah firms represent a critical dimension in employment creation and an important policy focus for the future. The presentations addressed this issue based on original data about a large sample of fast growing midsized firms in Europe. 

Speakers firstly described the methodology for data collection (first presentation). Then, they moved to the main findings  obtained when analysing the RISIS Cheetah database (second presentation), with a descriptive analysis on the distribution of fast  growing mid-sized firms in Europe, including a comparison with the distribution of mid-sized firms that did not  experience fast growth, and an analysis on the regional-level factors that are associated to the emergence and agglomeration of fast growing mid-sized firms in European regions (third presentation). In the final presentation (fourth presentation), have been argumented the policy implications of the analyses.