Principal Topic

Recognizing that new firms contribute to employment, income, and growth, international governments and donor agencies include entrepreneurship training programs in development efforts that target problems of poverty and underemployment. However, this choice of focus is not based on empirical information, derived and supported by systematic research of the factors influencing successful entrepreneurship in lesser-developed countries. Although many researchers are currently contributing to major international and global entrepreneurship research projects, those efforts ignore developing regions and markets. Thus, remarkably little, reliable, empirical information exists on the experience of entrepreneurship in developing countries. In this study ten years later, we attempt to fill this gap in the literature. Re-visiting the original sample set of subjects, we set up onsite interviews to investigate the state of their businesses, and to explore the factors consistent with new venture growth and demise in one developing country, Trinidad and Tobago.

Method

This follow-up, inductive study investigates three facets of continued venture success, using a structured questionnaire, interviews and other secondary data. These included the behavioral/biographical perspective of the individual founder or founding team; the organizational perspective of the planning process of the new venture; and the environmental perspective of the structural, political and economic market forces.

Results and Implications

The results confirmed and extended the results of the previous study about start-up success. In addition to the contribution of 1) multiple founders with prior joint work experience; and 2) prior entrepreneurial experience; and 3) the use of a formal planning process after startup on start-up success; the level of available debt capital influences new venture growth. The results can inform a theoretical framework useful for differentiating between, and enhancing the long-term success potential of new venture birth and new venture growth. The implications for contributing to the development of policies to promote strategies for long-term economic growth in developing countries, informed by reliable, empirical data, are potentially significant.

CONTACT: Denise-Margaret Thompson, Entrepreneurship Center, Norfolk State University, 700 Park Avenue, Norfolk VA 23504; (T) 757-823-8256 ; (F) 757-823-8259; dmthom@nsu.edu