The issue of organisational growth is increasingly crucial in the current economic landscape for most European countries, in particular given the need to recover competitiveness through stronger companies, especially in strategically relevant industries, and to capture immediate advantages in terms of job generation. As recently pointed out by the Economist, "Europe produces plenty of corner shops, hairdressers and so on. What it doesn't produce enough of is innovative companies that grow quickly and end up big" . Therefore, the attention of scholars, entrepreneurs, managers and policy makers...