From John Haltiwanger and al.
University of Chicago Press

The contribution of entrepreneurial businesses to economic growth is an often debated topic among the academic and policy- making communities and the subject of much discussion in the business and popular press. That there are high- growth entrepreneurial businesses that have made a substantial impact on the US economy, particularly in the high-tech sectors of the economy, is self-evident. High-tech start-ups from the last few decades, including Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, are now among the largest and most influential companies in the world. The entrepreneurs who founded these businesses have been the subject of much attention with in depth profiles and popular movies about their lives and how they achieved such enormous success.

However, the high-profile, high-growth entrepreneurs are small in number relative to the hundreds of thousands of new start-ups in the United States every year. Many of the latter fail soon after they start up or do not grow. In spite of this, recent evidence suggests that start-ups and young businesses make important contributions to job creation, innovation, and productivity growth. It is now understood, for example, that the job- creating prowess of small businesses is better attributed to the job-creating prowess of start-ups and young businesses. However, since many start-ups fail and don’t grow, it is apparent that any job-creating prowess is not shared equally among young businesses.