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Though considerable attention in the extant literature has been devoted to growth and performance of firms, there is a dearth of research on rapidly growing and high-performance companies or gazelles, in small to medium sized firms. This paper examines the drivers of rapid growth in manufacturing SMEs. In addition, the paper develops and tests a new approach to multi-variate analysis based on the conditional formatting of spreadsheets and the use of nested logical operators for complex comprehension. When analysing the results of most searches/studies, it is usually quite difficult to fully gain an understanding of the whole picture (i.e. the results in context). Using this new technique, we identify gazelles using a ranked database in a spreadsheet to create complete (nonloss) analysable visual patterns. Firms were ranked in terms of their 'growth footprint', using changes in employee numbers, profits, turnover and margin to calculate their individual growth performance/potential. The results of the study indicate that gazelles are less than 15 years old, have a CEO who is less than 50 years of age. They have a good financial performance (measured by gross profit per employee) and are privately owned and managed by their owners. The CEOs of the identified gazelle companies were further interviewed and it was found that self-organization and agility are key drivers of success. Keywords: SMEs; Gazelles; Growth; Organizational performance

A study examining the knowledge acquisition by small- and medium sized enterprises (SME) is presented. In this context, the advantages accruing to the SME because of its location in the vicinity of research excellence are analyzed.

Australia's exports share is 20% of the GDP, where innovations in systems and technology, franchising and licensing of Intellectual property are the contributors to the increased export. The small and medium size businesses are taking advantage of the era of innovation and outsourcing.

Byline: Jun-You Lin, Ching-Chyi Lee South Korea and Taiwan differ significantly in their industrial structures, with the former comprising mainly of Chaebols and the latter SMEs. One interesting question to ask then is whether such a difference may affect their respective innovative ability and performance. Using patent data derived from the NBER website, we find that their performances are very close. The quality of their inventions, as measured by originality and generality, were about equal. Although Taiwan slightly outperformed South Korea in the total number of patents obtained, South Korean inventions seem to result in better commercial values. Finally, we analysed the relationship among the average number of patent citations received, the year and the technology category. The results suggest that (1) innovative performance is related to the technology field and (2) there have been significant changes over time for both countries in the growth rate of patents and in the average number of citations received.

The effect of the proposed changes in the patent law of Iowa, on the ability of small and medium sized companies to file for new patents, is described.

The problems which small businesses face by sharing their intellectual property (IP), and the ways to avoid them, are discussed. The selfish 'mine' should be present in dealing with the matters of copyrights, patents and trademarks.

The software patents Directive proposed by the European Commission, has been rejected by the European Parliament, on grounds of repercussions to be felt by medical device makers, who rely on software. This rejection has made small and medium sized companies heave a sigh of relief, as they are more concerned with creativity and innovation. High tech companies, on the other hand have expressed disappointment.

A report is presented on recent patents acquired by small and medium sized companies in the Tech Valley region of Albany, New York with a few examples from inventions in the mechanical and electro-mechanical fields. The report shows apart from the industrial giants even small organizations are devoting time and money in creative research and patenting new products.