Anyone interested in, or a responsibility for, public welfare and prosperity should be familiar with the performance of the top Inc. 500 companies. The significance of that list goes far beyond the question of business performance.

    The Inc. 500 are a list of privately held companies that are selected annually by Inc. Magazine as among the fastest growing companies for the previous five years. It is useful for professionals who are interested in economic development to review this list to get a sense of the possibilities that are inherent in small business growth. Most people are just not aware of the kind of business growth objectives that can be achieved.

    The Inc. 500 are actually not a particularly extraordinary group of businesses, in the sense that they are esoteric or that they all hold patents or have other special advantages. However, even the 500th company each year has grown at least 100% per year! For comparative purposes I have listed the top- and lowest-rated companies from 1987-1996, together with five year revenue and growth percentages.

Table I. The #1 Inc. 500 Growth Companies from 1987 through 2002

     Many of these Inc. 500 companies were employing a few employees at the start of their growth and generated an average employment of more than 100 employees five years later. Some of the companies employed hundreds of individuals.

    The average sales growth for these companies is 10,823%. Over the years I have informally surveyed professionals, including those in the economic development field, and asked them what they thought an outstanding annual rate of growth might be for a business. Most answers were in the range of 20 to 100% per year. I met no one who could even imagine that a company might grow more than a 1000%, but the fact is that each year a number of companies grow by more than that

    The relevant conclusions with respect to prosperity and economic development that can be inferred from this list are:

1. High business growth rates are feasible and not accidental.
2. Small companies with sales of less than $300,000 can grow into business giants very quickly.
3. There likely is some pattern for rapid business growth that can be replicated.