Small business and entrepreneurship: their role in economic and social development

1. Summary of the Article

            In this article, the author has reviewed literature to see the role of small businesses and entrepreneurship in economic as well as social development. Different studies have been reporting that when long term prosperity and economic growth is needed, then the participation of small business and entrepreneurs proved to be crucial in many ways. In last two decades, the small businesses’ importance has been the focus of literature and it has shown that creation of new small businesses has been critical factor behind economic prosperity. The small businesses play a vital role in economic growth in terms of creating more jobs, and increasing positive competition amongst different emerging sectors of the businesses. The role of entrepreneurship is also a major focus of this article as entrepreneurs comes with new small businesses, which develop new ideas in business arena, and allow economy to grow at a rapid pace. To look at more contributions made by small businesses, the author has discussed various articles of other authors.

            The first research study reviewed in this article to look at contributions of small business and entrepreneurship was written by Boso, Oghazi and Hultman, and title of the article was “International entrepreneurial orientation and regional expansion”. The article has discussed in detail that how entrepreneurship increases the expansion of regional markets by adopting international orientation of entrepreneurship. The other study reviewed in this article has title as “Policies to enhance social development through the promotion of SME and social entrepreneurship: a study in the Colombian construction industry”. It focused on promoting small and medium size enterprises for the social development in different sectors. There are various other contributions made by different authors have been reviewed in this article in brief, and all have made a clear understanding of small businesses and entrepreneurship role in economic development. It was concluded in the end that small businesses help to develop as well as transform communities.

2. Comparing to Text

            The Text we studied in our class has discussed about the topic of small versus big businesses, looking at some facts from both sectors. It has talked about the role of small businesses in United States by defining its numbers like 28 million small businesses are operating in the country. These businesses comprise of 50% of GDP of United States. These numbers clearly show that impact and role of small business can be so crucial and significant for a country like United States. Looking at this class material, we can say that above mentioned article is very much associated with it, because it has also talked about small businesses role in economic & social development in communities. The analysis from both the text and article asserts the critical role of small business in developing and growing communities economically as well as socially.

3. Personal Experience

            The article is not too detailed about the topic, which I believe is very broad one to discuss, but still, the author has made a great contribution through this brief article. It has included various studies and their results to look at small business role in economic and social growth in different communities. The article could have added more details in this regard, but still it is a good one to get a brief idea about the role of small business in economic development.