Creativity in capital management by Young Entrepreneurs in West Java SMEs

Abstract

The resilience of small and medium-scale businesses during the economic crisis is no longer doubted. While other companies with large capital collapsed due to the crisis, small and medium-scale business actually survived and continue to run. The research is a continuation of previous research which conducted in 2014-2015 on several small and medium enterprise in West Java. The previous researchs were conducted using mix-method, while this research conducted in 2016-2017 with qualitative method using case studies. Several in-depth interviews and observation have been carried out on five young entrepreneurs in Bandung that mostly come from students. The major business sectors of them are fashion and culinary. Bourdieu’s theory of capital was used to analyse the findings. The results showed that financial capital and good bookeeping were necessary for business development. Each young entrepreneur shows a different way of managing their finances using their creativity. The same factors that are the key to their success are not profit-money oriented only, but they more concerned with networking which is social capital. In addition, mastery of smartphone usage and social media to win the competition is an absolute thing to sustain their businesses.