Abstract:

The industry and the business sector in general, are a major contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), national fiscus, socio-economic development, innovations and growth. The small to medium enterprise (SME) sector is key to this equation. Particularly, to fast-tracking innovations, employment generating and highly decentralized economic activity (to a micro-social level), and ultimately, economic growth. Ascertaining a competitive advantage however, becomes key to fostering competitiveness and long-term sustainability, regardless of the size, specialization and location of the entity. For this reason, governments and the Multi-national development bodies have moved to prioritize small business development efforts, with academic institutions located at the forefront of training programmes towards this end. A provision of academic programmes on entrepreneurship, development and management of SME's – have since become a defining characteristic of business school offerings over the past decade. As much as a handful of success can be traced in South East Asian countries however, the SME failure rate remains high in most of the developing world, Smaller enterprises seem to miss a competitive edge in respective developing markets. Incompatible management skills, together with non-competitive business acumen emerge as key explanations. The status-quo thus, brings into question the curricula mix and focus of relevant training programmes in academia. For this reason, we sought to explore the extent to which academic programmes prioritise the SME sustainability project for higher education graduates in emerging economies. The competitive advantage phenomenon to drive sustainability of the SME's is prioritized in this quest. We were curious about the competitive advantage concept; whether it is a capability, a state of performance, a performance indicator or whether it is a qualitative or quantitative phenomenon. The objective at the end, was to recommend an expertise yielding framework on harnessing a competitive advantage for SMEs – for infusion into entrepreneurship and management programmes in academia. We argue that strategic training programmes must be relevant to earmarked economic and industry contributions, let alone the directly affected socio-economic exigencies. Indeed, academic curricula should prepare graduates to understanding sustainable SME dashboards. We adopted a literature survey and the multi-case study strategy based on the qualitative components embedded therein. We found a competitive advantage and business sustainability to be the multi-layered phenomena. To this effect, guidelines to advancing a competitive advantage for SME's in emerging economies are recommended. The competitive advantage dashboard is then offered to demonstrate various stages of a competitive advantage life cycle - whose insight we believe, would strengthen long-term sustainability and growth of the SME sector. With this recommendation, Higher Education institutions will be better positioned to adapt their offerings, towards improved relevance and efficacy in their SME training programmes.

Keywords:

Competitive advantage, SME sustainability, SME entrepreneurship management acumen, guide to competitive advantage.