In today's economic environment, enterprises that solely rely on traditional technologies cannot meet dynamic customer demands. Several studies confirm that a nation's growth is dictated, to a large extent, by the performance of small businesses. However, the reality is that SMEs are constantly struggling to survive and maintain their schedule of activities. This is evident in the tra...

Chapter 1 It has been demonstrated that small businesses established by those born overseas have lower rates of failure and more sustained growth than the norm. Yet until the last couple of years almost no research had been done, in this country, on the motivation of these independents, on what strengths and resources are leading to the apparent success of their businesses, on the contributions...

Entrepreneurship policy mainly aims to promote innovative Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. However, the rate of entrepreneurship is commonly proxied using quantity-based metrics, such as small business activity, the self-employment rate, or the number of startups. We argue that those metrics give rise to misleading inferences regarding high-impact Schumpeterian entrepreneurship. To unambiguously...

This issue brief describes the ways in which competition between firms can benefit consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, small businesses and the economy more generally, and also describes how these benefits can be lost when competition is impaired by firms’ actions or government policies. Several indicators suggest that competition may be decreasing in many economic sectors, including the decades...

Individual Development Accounts are designed to support savings for the purchase of specific assets, such as buying a home, pursuing post-secondary education, or capitalizing a small business, by matching the deposits of program participants. The concept of matched savings has been promoted as a means to broaden asset ownership among populations missed by current policy. Recently, a study was r...

There are abundant studies examining the performance of small firms with their studies frameworks. Most of the studies focus on the common attributes and categories that neglect the aspect of location. However, the inconsistent results on the relationship between entrepreneurial factors and firm performance have led the authors to propose a contingency model in which the effects of individual d...

This paper discusses the application of Sustainable Livelihood Approach in assessing the impact of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in microenterprises in developing countries. Microenterprises contribute mainly towards socio-economic development by acting as a source of income and employment. The effectiveness of microenterprises is often curtailed by a range of challenge...