High-impact SMEs of the creative cluster and national ecosystems

The Finnish economy is treading water and globalisation makes it necessary for firms and policy makers to be able to manage complex international business relationships in a nimble manner. This paper studies the characteristics and role of high-impact small and medium-sized companies (high-impact SMEs) of the creative cluster in the Finnish business environment. From a national point of view, this subset of the whole enterprise population is of particular interest, since these companies have both managed to grow their sales significantly, as well as greatly increase the number of people they employ. We utilised a comprehensive financial information database to identify all Finnish high-impact SMEs and analysed in detail 61 SMEs of the creative cluster that met the criteria for a high-impact firm. We find that a significant high proportion of the firms are mid-sized, and that firms to a large extent are internationalized. However, these firms are at large established in the capital area, thus work opportunities also at large are created in this area (1563/2333).