The globalization is making life hard for many
economies. Fast-growing SMEs are often seen as a key to recovery for many an
ailing national economy. In order to prosper, these firms need to be able to
manoeuver nimbly in business ecosystems. We lay the groundwork for the research
of such firms through studying 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 significantly high proportion of the firms are
mid-sized, and that firms to a great extent are internationalized. These firms
are geographically unevenly distributed in the country, as over two thirds of
them are established in the capital area.