Metropolitan growth through high-impact firms

This research project is guided by the following research question: How can cities in the Katumetro project support the creation of more high-impact firms in the region? This project proposes that local policy makers should focus more on understanding the behavior of high- impact firms. Such firms are often already established on the market, and they can be seen as the backbone of national economic growth and provide more job opportunities than other firms (Acs et al., 2008). Nevertheless, the knowledge about high-impact firms in Finland is scarce (Autio, 2009), and is often limited to descriptive statistics (e.g., Lahdelma & Laakso, 2015). Thus we need to understand better how local policymakers could improve the interface between such firms and city resources. Hence, novel research is needed to help policymakers understand the role of local economies in high-impact firm success and learn about the requirements these firms have for their operational locations. The project is developed in close collaboration with various strategic city representatives and utilizes a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The project will generate a general infrastructure analysis tool that can be used by local policy makers, general public policy that support creation and maintenance of high-impact firms, general public policy that support internationalization of high-impact firms and city specific public policy recommendations for supporting and maintaining local high-impact firms.