Strategic Awareness and Growth Strategies in Small Sized Enterprises (SEs)

This paper is based on an empirical study, founded on the case-study method, carried out on 49 SEs localized in the Pesaro-Urbino province; it seeks to analyze the entrepreneurs’ perception on their own competitive position and the most important actual or future strategies defined to defend or strengthen that position. Starting from theoretical studies and empirical evidence, the paper focuses on two main themes: strategic awareness and growth strategies of SEs. First, it analyzes the degree of strategic awareness that local entrepreneurs have of exogenous threats and opportunities and endogenous strengths and weaknesses. Local SEs have different degrees of actual (“where the company is”) and perspective (“where the company might go”) awareness. Entrepreneurs are often unable to identify the resources and capabilities that their competitive advantage is based on and sometimes they underestimate their strengths, being more aware of their weaknesses. Local entrepreneurs are also lacking in skills for analyzing and recognizing threats, opportunities and success factors of the competitive environment they live in. The paper also examines the growth strategies planned or predicted by entrepreneurs for defending or strengthening their competitive position. The companies studied have several alternatives of qualitative and quantitative growth strategies on the horizon that can be divided into three groups: growth through internationalization, external growth based on strategic alliances, and growth based on innovation, in the broad sense. The paper focuses on the main difficulties which hinder SEs from achieving their strategic plans and discusses some implications (in terms of information, training and development and management of the relational network) for local institutions who seek to assist the competitive growth of local SEs and to increase their strategic awareness.