The successful elements of the Gazelles- A case-study of Gary Hamel’s Business Modelapplied to rapid-growing companiesin the region of Gothenburg

Sammanfattning: Background: Business strategies in order to succeed must be adapted to the rapid changes of anindustry in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. Gary Hamel, Igor Ansoff and MichaelE. Porter present strategic choices for the growth and expansion of a company. Jim Collins is amanagement educator and has created a concept for how a good company can become great.Research Questions: Our main research question is: Can Gary Hamel’s Business Model provide anexplanation for the success of the Gazelle companies? Further research questions are: Is it possible tofind any common features of the Gazelles that can explain the success based on Gary Hamel’sBusiness Model? Can Igor Ansoff’s “Product/Market expansion grid” or Michael E. Porter’s “TheFive Forces” be complementary in giving a concise picture of the Gazelles’ success? How can JimCollins Concept for growth bring a new angle to explain the Gazelles’ successful elements?Objective: We have chosen an explanatory objective. The aim of our study is to examine whether wecan give an explanation to the success of Gazelle companies and to find out whether they have anycommon features by applying different models to them.Delimitations: In this study we have only included medium-sized enterprises with 50 to 300employees, from the list of fast growing companies – known as “Gaseller” in the Swedish newspaper“Dagens Industri”. The research site is limited to the region of Gothenburg. The number of companiesincluded in the study is delimited to seven.Methodology: We have chosen to bring out a qualitative investigation in the form of a case-study andwith an abductive approach. The primary sources that we have used consist of seven qualitativeinterviews. Our secondary sources consist of literature, articles and information from the Internet. Inthis study we have used a semi-structured interview form. We organized our data arrangement at thesame time as the interviews took place, one of us making notes on the computer during the interview.The companies examined are presented anonymously.Results and Conclusions: Our conclusion is that Gary Hamel’s Business Model gives a clear picturefor the success of the Gazelles. We have also discovered common features of the Gazelles that canexplain their success. Furthermore we have concluded that Michael E. Porter’s “The Five Forces” canbe beneficial in giving a concise picture of the Gazelles’ success while Ansoff’s “Product/Marketexpansion grid” cannot give an explanation to the same extent. Finally we found that Jim Collins’Concept for growth could give a new angle to explain their success, even though we could not applyall of the selected principals to the examined companies.Suggestions for Further Research: We suggest a similar study in a few years to see if the companiesstill are successful and have made any changes of their strategies. Another interesting angle for furtherresearch is to find out if the Gazelle companies’ success can be explained by other theories, such as,for example, strategic market management or organisational management.