Viwe Mrwebi*, Patrick Mawila
The new South Africa, post the Apartheid dispensation has been characterized by numerous economic challenges among them redressing economic and social imbalances. SMEs performance evidence from the past suggests that while money is important on fueling SMEs development, incubation of small businesses from inception to full growth stage is even more crucial. Studying the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the BCMM is imperative in devising bankable solutions through a holistic approach. In the past few decades, the evolution of small development philosophies resulted in the conception of the idea of the SMEs ecosystem. The current study was conducted with the main aim of examining the dynamics of a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem towards enhancing SMEs development in BCMM.
This study was guided by an interpretive research paradigm necessitating the use of a qualitative research approach. In terms of the research design, this study employed an exploratory type of a research design. The targeted respondents comprised of 10 SME owners and managers from the BCMM area. Questionnaires were used for recording responses. The questionnaire was semi-structured, combining closed-ended options with a few open-ended options. Primary data collected in this study was cleaned and coded before undergoing further analysis. Based on the exploratory research design, the study made use of thematic analysis as the chosen technique.
Findings from this study are a combination of literature analysis and primary data collected from this study. From the analysis, it was evident that an ecosystem plays a crucial role in bringing together stakeholders with the objective of improving business performance. It also came out that an entrepreneurship ecosystem operates on similar principles as those that function in a biological system. Business ecosystems are important because they serve as a networked of relatively free collaboration between several companies from one or more industries. It was fundamental for the researcher to gain understanding of the functionality elements of the ecosystem. Respondents revealed that an entrepreneurship is built on principles of the natural ecosystem; they must serve to store, convert and share information.