What Are “Gazelles” and Why Are They Important?

    A well-developed local economy is self-renewing. Resilient to adversity, the self-renewing economy has organizations and individuals who continually generate new opportunities to offset the loss of older opportunities.

    The best indicator of such an economy is the presence of what job-creation expert David Birch calls “gazelles.” Gazelles are entrepreneurial organizations that grow at an explosive rate, often at 100% a year or more. Gazelles create the vast majority of new jobs (and new good jobs) and bring many technological innovations to market. (Cities with many gazelles will even have higher quality of life scores in the future.) Finally, high-growth firms even have longer life expectancy.

    Conclusion:  Communities need gazelles.

How do we promote gazelles?     Gazelles don’t appear out of thin air: They are based on sizeable opportunities. But, it requires entrepreneurs to recognize and construct viable new opportunities. That is, a community’s entrepreneurial potential depends on its supply of potential entrepreneurs. The supply of potential gazelle entrepreneurs is crucial, but we already know how to nurture them:     1)  We need to directly help gazelles and potential gazelles to fulfill their potential to help          them grow and to thrive.     2)  We need to help smaller firms who want to reorient themselves strategically          toward new directions that will provide the high growth that creates good new          jobs.     3)  We need to help larger firms to create gazelle-type ventures within their          organizations.     4)  We need to educate important stakeholders in the community as to the          importance of gazelles to building –and keeping- a self-renewing local economy.          It is important to show these stakeholders (whether political groups, government,          the media, et al.) how the process works- it isn’t ‘magic’, that it’s brains and a lot          of hard work.

    The greater quantity of potential entrepreneurs we have, the greater quantity of gazelles we'll have. The greater quality of potential entrepreneurs, the greater quality of entrepreneurship in Idaho and beyond.

    Conclusion: All of these work together to build a self-renewing, resilient local economy.

How can BSU promote gazelles?

    We are already preparing training programs that can be adapted to nurturing gazelles at different stages of their development.  One variation would be training programs for early stage entrepreneurs "a boot camp" to get them started on the "right foot."  Another would serve as a "finishing school" for firms on the brink of explosive growth.

    We are also working on formal courses (preferably joint offerings of Business and Engineering) on technology commercialization.  An example: Dr. Krueger has observed and participated in a benchmark program for universities to turn new technologies into gazelle firms. UCLA’s Venture Development Program (www.uclaventures.org) teams up students (under faculty supervision plus community-based venture expertise) with entrepreneurs and technologies to develop business plans and implementation plans for a gazelle firm.

    They’ve created thousands of good jobs already in just a short time. And, the faculty enjoy the process immensely (teaching cases, research, and consulting) while the university benefits directly and indirectly (UCLA’s $75 million b-school complex was a direct result of their program). More importantly, the students (and other participants/observers) learn not only how to grow a gazelle, they learn that they themselves can do it.

   Conclusion:  BSU is prepared to train gazelles.

Why BSU?

    BSU has the contacts. UCLA’s program director is committed to helping BSU create its own version of this proven model. We also have the contacts to implement other proven models developed by our friends at those schools. 

    BSU has the expertise. BSU has the largest concentration of entrepreneurship expertise in the region, including proven experience at economic development (entrepreneurship faculty, ISBDC, the College of Engineering, and others), we have the critical mass of talent and energy needed to promote gazelles.

    Conclusion:  BSU is willing and able to help existing or potential high-growth entrepreneurs in Idaho.

Where the heck are we....... (want to help change that?)

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