Survival and Growth of Small Firms

Have you ever wondered who thought about the idea of creating a multinational retail corporation here in America called Wal-Mart? Sam Walton - founder of Wal-Mart was behind that idea. Sam Walton is an example of great entrepreneur who wanted to make his business successful. An entrepreneur needs a variety of skills but does not need to have a formal education. Being an entrepreneur is challenging even if an individual is well educated on the field or has no education at all. There is always the risk conducting business because of the competition with other companies. However, what does an entrepreneur do? Do you have what it takes to be on top the business world and compete ? An entrepreneur must have is a guide to start and run a business even if it is a big or small business.

There are plenty of small business arising in the market. But does the success of the busssiness rely solely upon the owners? Can they not trust their employees to carry out the task needed in order to keep the business running properly? This is the question we will be addressing in this dilemma. is it really necessary for the owners to be on the premise at all times? Are personality cults created in small businesses? Is it possible for customers to create a personality cult around the owners of a business? How might the owner go about reducing customer’ dependency upon the presence and/ or personality of the owner and leading customers to depend more on the business itself?

The purpose of this essay is to critically discuss 2 debate topics using both opposing sides, for and against, in order to create an academic argument for each topic. Debate 1 will argue the points of “Starting a small business is too risky or can anyone do it?” will be supported with references of journals and articles. Debate 2 will analyse the for and against argument for the topic of “To fail to plan is to plan to fail: you must plan” where academic articles will be used to back up each point made to for each side of the debate. Business has been a foundation in society for centuries but only within the past 10 years has the UK government promoted SME’s (small and medium enterprises) and encouraged the public to invest in creating a business with incentive grants and education programmes such as Business gateway and the hatchery.

Small businesses are the backbone of national economy and play a leading role in innovations as well as in creating jobs. Small business has the intrinsic needs to growth. Obvious contributions of the growth of small businesses include the increased return on investment and job creation. The interesting and valuable question is how small business grows and are all small businesses growing? It is no surprise that the growth of business is a core topic both in organization theory and entrepreneurship, both are interested in the process and causes of business growth. Stages of growth models, which assume that business go through some distinct stages from birth to maturity, have been the most popular theoretical approach in academic to understand small business growth. Although the stages model of growth has been criticized for being too sequential and linear which is unrealistic and inconsistent with empirical evidence (e.g. Phelps et al., 2007; Levie and Lichtenstein 2010), various new stages models of business growth have been developed since the 1960s.

Small businesses are the core of the engine that runs the American economy. They are a very intricate and essential part of what makes America strong. Annually there were approximately 400,000 new small businesses started every year in the United States of America. Before the recession the normal business closure for companies in America were approximately 100,000 annually. This rate of exchange between new and closing businesses is known as “the birth and death rate of American companies”. After the recession the death rate of businesses in the United States has increase exponentially, growing from 100,000 companies a year to approximately 470,000 companies closing annually (Joseph, 2014). Most may think this is a result of the recession,

In Initial Human and Financial Capital as Predictors of New Venture Performance, Cooper et al (1994), reviewed a sample of 2994 entrepreneurs across various sectors, high-tech and non-high-tech, to determine whether an entrepreneur’s upbringing, experiences and education had a statistically significant relationship with the probability of success.

Numerous large businesses that are operating today were once started as small businesses. A new business is established to create a good or service that no other businesses have ever created or simply a product of higher quality than existing products, with the purpose of meeting customers’ needs and earning profits. Due to the technological advances at the present time, starting and operating a new business is less laborious. Nevertheless, would-be entrepreneurs should be familiar with the proper approaches to start their businesses.

secretary of education states that “high-quality education" that encourages "creativity, imagination, and ingenuity’”. It is true that thirty percentage of startup business failure reasons of “unbalanced Experience or Lack of Managerial Experience”, followed by “lack of Experiences in line of goods or services” is about eleven percentage. Interestingly, company competence occupied the highest rate of failure of 46% (Statistic Verification, Entrepreneur Weekly, Small Business Development Center, Bradley University, university of Tennessee Research). In addition, successful entrepreneur usually possess “highly motivated and willingness to take initiative to execute duties” and have appropriately responsible to their activities, decision, and company’s outcomes.

Starting a business is the latest trend. Just take a look at Instagram. Several profiles have the caption ‘Entrepreneur’. At this very moment, there is someone, somewhere working on an idea, a business plan or launching a startup. Entrepreneurship is on the rise like never before. The flexibility and independence that comes with being one’s own boss is attractive and worth taking the leap in starting a business. However, most people don’t know that being an entrepreneur is a grueling journey that can be very lonely and stressful at times. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 50% of businesses fail during the first year. Starting a business can be a scary task, but the

Small businesses are mighty minnows, reflecting the competitive spirit that a market economy needs for efficiency; they provide an outlet for entrepreneurial talents, a wider range of consumer goods and services, a check to monopoly inefficiency a source of innovation, and a seedbed for new industries; they allow an economy to be more adaptable to structural change through continuous initiatives embodying new technologies, skills, processes, or products (Ibielski 1997, p. 1).

Entrepreneurship is difficult to define throughout its history research. Even nowadays, this concept is still a debatable point (Rajendra, et al., 2017). Based on four decades of research, Gartner (1988) concludes that entrepreneurs are founders of new firms. Shane and Venkataraman (2000) consider entrepreneurship as “a new venture’s risk-taking endeavor seeking an opportunity” and Fortunato (2014) adds innovative value into the concept of entrepreneurship. Thus, research on the definition of entrepreneurship continue. According to those diverse views, I will interpret six unique entrepreneurial characteristics and theoretically analyze each one. Risk taker, need for achievement and proactivity as my strengthens will be illustrated with my experience. Innovativeness, internal locus of control and tolerance for ambiguity are my weaknesses, thus I will describe relevant successful Entrepreneurs’ experiences.

Conclusion: This paper is intended to give clarity on the depths of small businesses, how they plan to succeed and get through possible adversity. The surviving mechanism it takes to maintain in a world where large businesses are expected to exist longer than small business.

There has been extensive research conducted on the characteristics that successful entrepreneurs possess. These attributes vary widely across literature, however there are common key traits that are required to achieve any form of success. Frederick et al (2013) suggest entrepreneurs are risk takers, optimistic, have sound judgement and an ability to manage. While a review of literature relating to the psychology of an entrepreneur reveals a large variety of characteristics in a successful entrepreneur, these can be consolidated to a a few into only a few traits that are essential for a successful entrepreneur. Whilst taking into

There are two sides to every debate, and the "what makes an entrepreneur" argument has raged for decades with neither side able to conclusively prove their case. There are many who believe that an entrepreneur must possess personality traits such as vision, passion and drive that are innate and cannot be taught. Others argue that the skills of evaluating opportunities, motivating people and operating a business are easily passed on to eager students looking to be entrepreneurs. The truth is that both sides are right and it's time for a compromise: Entrepreneurs are born and made. Some people may be natural entrepreneurs and immediately open a business, others will have studied and

The importance of small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs) in the economy of any country cannot be overlooked. In fact for nearly 15 years, most researchers dealing with economic planning have highlighted the significance of these enterprises stating that they are a key player in realizing any country’s economic goals. As such, governments as well as other organizations with interest in development are laying plans and strategies to promote the establishment of Small and Micro Enterprises. This is seen as a move to ensure that there is full participation of SMEs in the country’s economy. The Small and Micro Enterprises have been known to contribute to a large extend as a source of innovation, entrepreneurial skills as well as source of employment. For example, statistics in 25countries of the European Union show that 99% of the jobs provided to its citizens come from the micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Rowe (2008) points out that the British economy relies heavily on the participation of SMEs. On the other hand, 99% of the UK’s economy is composed of small and micro enterprises.