ABSTRACT
More generally, this chapter aims to address the central concerns of the book, namely, what makes the new small firm tick? Do those that survive have different features from those that close? These are the issues addressed in this chapter. In doing so, it makes reference to the unique body of primary source data on small business inception in Scotland referred to in Chapter 2. This facilitates an examination, to use biological terms, of the morphology and morphogenesis of small firms. This is possible because over 600 quantitative measures are available for each firm, and the data collectively take the form of an unbalanced panel. Many of these key measures are defined in the Appendix to this chapter.
