Presenter: Hayden Egley
Authors: Hayden Egley
Faculty Advisor: Jared Hansen
Institution: Utah State University
This research provides insights into the entrepreneurial process of small business owners (SBOs) in developing nations. Much of the existing entrepreneurship research has focused on small and medium sized businesses in developed nations such as the United States and United Kingdom; very little is known about the topic in the context of developing nations. Furthermore, while entrepreneurship is important to the economies of developing nations, entrepreneurship is often hampered in them due to lack of capital and financial innovation. This research uses the results of depth interviews of 70 SBOs in developing nations, focusing on Mongolia and the Philippines. The hour-long interviews spanned dozens of questions about the SBOs entrepreneurial journey. Initial findings of the coded data include several interesting and important insights. For example, we found that SBOs who stated they did not have mentors were significantly more unsatisfied with their level of business success (versus SBOs who did have mentors). Also, SBOs who said that profit was their number one goal also indicated profit was their measurement for success while, in contrast, SBOs who indicate other elements (different from profit) for their number one goals typically put yet other elements for their measurement of success that didn’t match up with their number one goals. Furthermore, there is a lack of correlation between the SBOs number of years in business and their satisfaction. Other additional insights on entrepreneurial processes, goals, and environmental factors such as the impact of local government were also discovered which are discussed in this research presentation.