• Scale-ups are dubbed “powerhouses of productivity”. Scalability refers to a company’s capacity to grow and cope with increased output while, simultaneously, keeping costs more or less at the same level.
• This article seeks to provide some helpful pointers to help you scale your business.

The phrase “scaling up” or “scaling” a business has become a staple in business circles in the past few years. Some use it as a synonym for growing a business; others have adopted a more restricted and technical definition when applying the term. In a nutshell, scalability refers to a company’s capacity to grow and cope with increased output while, simultaneously, keeping costs more or less at the same level. The UK’s ScaleUp Institute bases its definition of a “scale-up” on that of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: it is a high-growth business whose number of employees and/or turnover increases by more than 20% per annum over a three-year period, with no fewer than ten employees at the beginning of the period.

Scale-ups are dubbed “powerhouses of productivity”. For example, in the UK, scale-ups propel the growth engine of its economy. As of 2020, there were 33,955 scale-ups with a total turnover of over GBP1.2 trillion and over 3 million people in employment. Despite constituting less than 10% of SMEs in the UK, scale-ups contributed to 50% of the total turnover output by SMEs. This pattern is not a unique phenomenon exclusive to the UK, although the distinct segmentation and the label “scale-ups” are not so readily applied to high-growth companies elsewhere.