Photo illustration by Ray Vella

By Amy Barrett, Amy S. Choi, Stacy Perman, Jeremy Quittner, and John Tozzi

The Inner City 100 is a ranking of the fastest-growing inner city companies in the country. The list is produced by the Boston nonprofit Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School's Michael E. Porter. The ICIC's aim is to foster economic growth in inner cities, and identifying high-growth inner city companies is one way it showcases the competitiveness of these areas. For the 11th annual list, companies were ranked on their compound annual growth rate from 2003 to 2007. To qualify for this year's list, a company must be located in an inner city and must have had at least $200,000 in revenues in 2003, at least $1 million in revenues in 2007, and employ at least 10 people full-time.

Profiles of the top 25 companies follow. Our interactive table shows the ranking of all 100.