Entrepreneurship and small medium enterprise in ASEAN

Abstract

Entrepreneurship and Small Medium Enterprises have grown positively all over the world, especially in ASEAN, and it is comprehensively established that entrepreneurship is important for individual’s wealth and country’s economic growth. Despite those facts, the most issue of ASEAN’s Small Medium Enterprises known from preliminary research is initial capital. Most of them are micro in size and located in rural agrarian economies with limited access to markets and finance. Those phenomena get the attention of scholars from diverse disciplines, all of them interested in the profile and motivation of Small Medium Enterprises and their business sustainability. The method of this research is Deepth in Interview with entrepreneur in Indonesia, Cambodia, Brunei Darussalam, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand. Several factors were studied, with positive effects on each stage of the entrepreneurship process, for Small Medium Enterprise. Two ways of improving SMEs in ASEAN would be providing training for SMEs (especially in the field of marketing), and creating policies that support SMEs to run smoothly and make progress such as ease of business licensing as well as providing facilities such as work space for SMEs. The results of this study are expected to be used as a consideration for SMEs in ASEAN and government to optimize performance.