Kuwait SMEs

Professor Ahmed A. Ahmed is a Wharton PhD.He taught in American and Middle Eastern universities and published in leading journals.His main interest is international business and entrepreneurship. Dr Abdallah Al Owaihan a PhD from the University of Saint Louis,Missouri and is an associate professor of management.He has published in entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship today is viewed by many as the engine of growth and development and many governments are courting it.Kuwait is no exception and after many years of a dominant public role in the economy and huge infrastructure expenditure,governments are loosening the reins and empowering the private sector through incentives and deregulation. Kuwait has been working on this trying to make doing business easier and making capital more available for would-be entrepreneurs.The hoped for results though, have not always materialized.This we believe is partly because not enough studies about the nature of entrepreneurship in the country and/or the environmental conditions have been done to make the policies more effective.Ours is one study in this direction hoping to partially fill the void.It is by no means comprehensive.We only hope it will lead to more studies in this regard,at least in Kuwait and the Middle East.This study was started by one of the authors as a simplistic presentation for an academic conference.Later the co-author joined and drew attention to and brought in the current literature and thus redirected the work.