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Following the impact on regional renewal and employment ascribed to rapidly growing firms (high-impactfirms, HIFs), this paper argues that little is still known in economic geography and business studies todayregarding the mechanisms influencing growth of such firms and, hence, the potential impact on regionalemployment. The aim of this paper is thus to explore how the qualitative content of skills (i.e. the degree ofsimilarity, relatedness and unrelatedness) recruited to a firm during a period of fast growth influences itsfuture success. Our findings, based on a sample of 1,589 HIFs in the Swedish economy, suggest that it is notonly the number of people employed that matters in aiding the understanding of the future destiny of the firms– but also, more importantly, it is the scope of the skills recruited and their proximity to related industries.