Fernando Labastida, communications specialist

What’s a “gazelle”?

How do you know if you’re a “gazelle”? Does it just mean growing your sales quickly? What does “gazelle” even mean? What about this definition:

Gazelles are companies that display rapid growth, or a potential for fast growth, that have institutionalized and professionalized, in an orderly and continuous manner, the transfer of the intrinsic value of their human capital into it’s structural value, and at the same time strengthens both by managing it’s relational value for the co-creation of value in a sustainable and scalable manner. A gazelle enterprise is one that, despite it’s size, is a good candidate for being acquired by another company, thanks to its structural and relational value, present and future.

That’s the definition of fast growth companies, or “gazelles”, by Javier Murillo at Axeleratum, a business accelerator out of Mexico City.

Breaking it down: the body parts of the gazelle

According to Murillo, a gazelle is determined by how a company is doing on three fronts: revenues, profits and innovation.

1. Revenue Acceleration: how can I sell more?

The capacity for a company to grow sales above the industry average over a sustained period of time, based on it’s business structure (processes and methodologies) and business relationships (internal and external).

2. Profit Acceleration: how can I make more?

The capacity for a company to maintain it’s profitability above the industry average over a sustained period of time, based on it’s financial and structural operations (processes and methodologies) and financial and operational relationships (internal and external).

3. Sustained Acceleration: how do I differentiate myself?

The capacity for a company to maintain it’s capacity for innovation and growth above the industry average over a sustained period of time, based on a deep understanding of their industry (real and potential), and supported by a structure for innovation (processes and methodologies) and innovation-oriented relationships (internal and external).

In the next post, we’ll look at the different stages a company can find itself on a “gazelle axis,” both structurally and on the basis of it’s relationships.

Tags: fast growth company, gazelle

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Enterprise Performance Management, Strategic Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.