Empirical studies of entrepreneurship have used rate of growth as a measure of venture performance (Begley and boyd, 1987, lee 1996). Hanks (1993) Found that self reported data of business growth and business volume from entrepreneurs had better internal consistency and content validity compared with other self reported data of venture performance.
Johannisson, 1993, Philips, 1989 and story, 1994, says growth has been used as a simple measure of performance in business. Also (brush, 1992) suggest that, growth is the most appropriate indicator of performance for surviving small firms. Most recent research on firms growth has increase our understanding of different growth patterns eg demler (2003) have shown that firm growth patterns are related to the demographic characteristics of firms such as age.