Entrepreneurship in SMEs

Abstract: Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make about 98% of total population of businesses and create about 50% of GDP. Every day in Poland about 1500 new enterprises is registered and from 1400 to 1600 of them liquidate their activities. Such dynamics in SMEs existence is caused by many factors but one of them is the changeable business environment including both the macroenvironment and the industry environment. The SMEs significance to the country’s economy brings to mind a question how their cycle of life can be extended. The problem can be categorized as a problem of the SMEs ability to perceive and use of the market opportunities. A systematic approach to the problem consists of three stages: segmentation of the environment, analysis of events and changes in the segments and associating of the events into favourite situations that is into opportunities. Each of the stage can be supported by different methods. Example giving in the first stage the PEST analysis as well as structural analysis of sector can be used. In the second stage the following methods of strategic analysis can be used: trends extrapolation, strategic groups mapping, sectors attractiveness analysis, structural analysis of the sector, etc. In the last stage mostly the cross-impact method can be used. The use of the above methods of strategic analysis can be easily evidenced mostly in big and some medium enterprises. That is because these enterprises posses in their organizational structures functional units that are focused on particular segments of the environment. Example giving the R&D department analysis the changes in the technological segment, the financial department analysis what happens in the economic segment and the procurement department analysis the processes in the segment of suppliers. However small enterprises and a number of the medium once have very simple structure and there do not exist the organizational unit that are specialized in dealing with particular macroenvironment and the industry environment segments. Does it mean that SMEs do not observe and not analyse the changes in the business environment and do not search it to identify the opportunities? The practice and the pilot research that has been done by the author leads to negative answer for the question. The conjecture is that SMEs search for the opportunities using the entrepreneurship abilities of the management as well as the whole organization. To verify the conjecture an investigation has been undertaken in Polish SMEs. The investigation concerns the entrepreneurship features of the owners/managers of the businesses and the entrepreneurship marketing as well as the methods of strategic analysis. In this paper the results of the research are presented.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Identification of Opportunity, SMEs

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100436

Cite this paper:

​