Emmanuelle LUMIER U1071224

MARKETING FOR SMALL BUSINESS
Topic: How a SME can improve its performance using entrepreneurial orientation (EO)?

INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurial Orientation has played an important function in economic growth of countries, innovation, and competitiveness. The entrepreneurial orientation of a business refers to organizational processes, methods and management styles used by a company. An entrepreneurial company is a company committed to innovation, which takes risks, pursues opportunities and act proactively (Miller, 1983). The entrepreneurial orientation is also apprehended by the autonomy and some form of aggressive competition prevailing in the firm (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). These principles are related with the improvement of the company performances in our day's business environments, where the product and economic life cycles are shortened (Hamel, 2000), and where the future profits which outlook of existing activities are undecided and companies should constantly look for new opportunities (Wiklund & Shepherd, 2005). A lot of studies show the results that businesses with a more entrepreneurial orientation perform better. That is what I am going to show you in this report. This study will highlight the role of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) in the performance of Small and Medium scale Enterprises.

EO IMPROVE BUSINESS PERFORMANCES
In their conceptual model (1996), Dess and Lumpkin underline that internal and external factors could moderate the relation between the entrepreneurial orientation and the performance. (See appendix 1&2). Indeed this conceptual model explains that the entrepreneurial orientation is basically based on five main dimensions: autonomy, innovativeness, risks taking, proactiveness, and competitiveness. By explaining the meaning of each of this dimension we can easily understand how the entrepreneurial orientation affects the performances of a company. The first one is autonomy. In fact autonomy is the