Business Cases for mSMEs

The case studies in this book concern the mSME sectors: micro, small and medium sized enterprises. There were two motivations for creating and publishing these cases: • as a practical resource for students at school, college and university • as a motivation for anyone who is thinking about or beginning to set up their own business As you work through this book you will not fail to notice that the cases mainly come from the Far East: the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia. I thought this was a very valuable thing to do for a variety of reasons: • most of the cases show how it is possible to think at the Micro level whereby little capital investment might be required • some of the cases relate to the extension of a hobby or something that the subjects of the cases thought about when they were students themselves • some of the cases show how an otherwise complex idea can be scaled down to the micro and small enterprise level I have tested many of these cases in a classroom/training room setting: either myself or with the help of a colleague and I know that students in particular appreciate the motivation the cases provide. Given the level of unemployment of young people world wide, I believe this book is an excellent resource for them: to provide inspiration and motivation for these people to take hold of their lives for themselves. Just today there was a report on youth unemployment in the UK and I posted the following in my business blog as a reaction to that: • Many young people who live at home are receiving unemployment and other benefits and they may well be satisficing: there is no drive for them to need work. • I talk to young people whose first ambition is to become a manager ... this is before they have any experience and, indeed, education, training and experience of the real world. Parents, teachers and others who discuss these matters with their young people need to convince them that starting at the bottom is the reality and not something that was fine in the old days ... • There are people who say, for example, that if someone can communicate, it doesn't matter whether they can spell and so on: complete tosh! This is a recipe for people to be trapped at the lower levels. After all, the average middle and senior manager needs good communication skills as they have to give speeches, write reports and so on. Mathematical abilities are nowhere near what they were: I have met 18 year olds who wanted to use a calculator to find the answer to the question, "What is 10 as a percentage of 100?"