The term “gazelle” refers to the classic entrepreneur of myth and reality, someone who starts a new business venture (or a new way of doing business) and aims for it to explode into a white-hot phenomenon such as Home Depot, Facebook, Jenny Craig, Netflix, Under Armour, and Instagram.
 
The term “gazelle” was coined by the economist David Birch. His identification of gazelle companies followed from his 1979 report titled “The Job Generation Process” (MIT Program on Neighborhood and Regional Change), wherein he identified small companies as the biggest creators of new jobs in the economy. In 1994, however, Birch revised his thesis, isolating job-creating companies he called “gazelles.” Characterized less by size than by rapid expansion, Birch defined the species as enterprises whose sales doubled every four years. By his estimates, these firms, roughly 4% of all U.S. companies, were responsible for 70% of all new jobs. The gazelles beat out the elephants (like Walmart) and the mice (corner barbershops). When you hear politicians say, “Small businesses create most of the new jobs,” they’re really talking about young and growing firms. They are talking about gazelles.
 
Unsurprisingly, gazelles are rare creatures. A 2008 study by Zoltan Acs, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Public Policy at George Mason University, found that a mere 2% to 3% of all companies were high-impact firms. Elephants and mice cut jobs, and the deeper they slice the higher unemployment rises. But when it comes to job creation, they are almost irrelevant.
 
In his latest book, Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder, written with Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal, Jim Clifton observes, “Innovation is essential, and we need it. But the real magic starts with entrepreneurs – with people who are born with the rare gift to build successful businesses. Years ago, Thomas Edison observed, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” Clifton obviously agrees. “An innovation has no value until an ambitious entrepreneur builds a business model around it and turns it into a product or service that customers will buy. If you can’t turn an innovative idea into something that creates a customer, it’s worthless.”
 
I agree that such an initiative is “worthless” in terms of its commercial value. However, many so-called “failures” in experimentation or prototyping can be of substantial value in terms of what can be learned from them. Creating more and better jobs will depend on wide and deep support of entrepreneurism in both the public and private sectors.
 
In essence, creating more and better jobs will depend on gazelles.