High growth enterprises play a significant role for the creation of employment, innovations and growth of an economy. They are defined as employer enterprises that show an average annual increase in the number of employees of 10 % or more over a three-year-period. Enterprises having less than 10 employees in the starting year and/or that were newly born are excluded. Young high growth enterprises (so-called gazelles), as a subgroup of high growth enterprises, are no more than five years old.
Legal base is the regulation on European business statistics (EBS) at European level and the business demography statistics regulation (Unternehmensdemografiestatistik-Verordnung) at national level. In addition to the business registers of Statistics Austria (Business Register for Administrative Purposes and Statistical Business Register), the main data sources include tax data, employer and employee data from the Federation of Social Insurances, and data from the Chamber of Commerce and the Commercial Register.