Très petite entreprise et croissance : A la découverte d'un continent inexploré

The focus on high growth SMEs, the famous gazelles defined by Birch (1987), resulted in a perverse and persistent effect: to think that much employment growth was provided by a small percentage of SMEs and that these SMEs were mainly medium-sized businesses. The result was the marginalization of " mice "(small businesses) and even very small businesses or a interest only in newly created and technologically innovative small businesses. Also, there is very little information on the growth process at work in the companies that represent the vast majority of SMEs. Our work will therefore aim to provide an update on the state of knowledge on this subject and within companies as well as open up avenues of research that could eventually feed the stock of knowledge on this issue. Rather than focusing only on the growth factors, we wished to explore the levers for it. We felt it necessary to participate in that review to take stock on a number of assertions that through constant repetition eventually become certainties, such as the role played by territories or profile leaders. Our study will therefore seek to answer a question: what are the reasons for the growth of a very small firm at a given time? And conversely why do a majority of them not grow. So these are all mechanisms of growth of TPEs that we wish to explore.