Abstract:
The essence of entrepreneurship spanning many decades, from, broadly put, seen as any attempt to create something new to current times including concepts of economic value creation and uncertainties. The urgency of small businesses contributing to the creation of this value is visible to the country due to unemployment stagnating at 25.5% and the 2008 financial crisis not a so distant memory. Entrepreneurship breeds innovation which can be turned into an economic value. Small businesses are a breeding place for innovation. Entrepreneurship Orientation (EO), a concept in entrepreneurship literature highlights the innovativeness, pro-activeness and risk taking businesses can be positively on business performance. However, with the high mortalities of small business at stages of business inception, a need has been created in relooking at what the factors impacting business are critical for to improve on SMEs life expectancy.
By inferring age of the business as a measure of business performance, a quantitative cross sectional study was conducted on 62 owners of small businesses with age of 10 years and beyond to investigate what the owners perceived as factors critical for SME survival. Through the ranking of the factors deemed to impact on SME performance, an understanding of what factors were deemed critical was found. A focus on managerial skills on managing business resources and value offering moderated by
