Research University in Action: Experience from the "Russian Gazelles" Project

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present the methodology of the first Russian empiric research of high-growth firms (or Gazelles). Special attention is paid to the description of а research technology that suggests wide involvement of students in the process of researching (so called research university technology). We prove that projects requiring large amount of creative technical work could be implemented almost exclusively with the help of this technology. Only close cooperation of professors and a large number of students made it possible to analyze thousands of Russian firms and make detailed reports on hundreds of high-growth firms. This technology also allowed to estimate these companies’ impact on the Russian economy and study different competitive strategies and management techniques used by high-growth firms.