The Succession and Business Transformation of Taiwanese SMEs to Reactivate the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Taiwanese SMEs (small and medium enterprises) have been the source of creativity and the key driving force of economic growth early on in the 1960s, key partners in supply chain and industry clusters later, and recently focal point of local economy, social value, and dreams for young generation. However, based on the “White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises in Taiwan,” in recent five years, share of SMEs in existence over 20 years was in the range of 21% to 23%, far below the average 35% of large enterprises. This shows the business succession / transition remains a major challenge to SMEs as going concerns. Further, compared to large enterprises, SMEs in existence over 20 years suffered significant sales decline and “the crisis of the elderly age” as their firstgeneration entrepreneurs got into old age and lost their vitality and creativity. It has become an important issue for sustainable development of SMEs to reactivate the entrepreneurial spirit, combined with sound “second-generation succession” and business transformation strategy. In this paper, we use the two key factors of succession and business transformation to analyze how the Taiwanese SMEs to reactivate the entrepreneurial Spirit. The research results provide some policy implications for Succession and transformation of Taiwanese SMEs. These points are suggested as: (1) promote market-oriented business management courses in colleges and universities to cultivate curiosity and creative thinking of potential new generation of successors;(2) form professional succession team in response to new business opportunities; (3) integrate existing knowledge exchange platforms for succession to provide customized mechanisms of knowledge sharing and exchange services required for different types of succession; (4) provide succession planning adviser or match professional managers to succession needs for SMEs' sustainable development as going concerns; (5) encourage new generation successors of SMEs to obtain innovation awards that could reactivate the entrepreneurial spirit; (6) grasp the opportunity of succession and transformation to guide SMEs towards institutionalized management; (7) establish SME succession and transformation follow-up service mechanism linking research institutions, universities and private sector professional consulting companies to meet long term counseling needs for SME succession and transformation; (8) strengthen cross-industry cooperation mechanism for SMEs’ sustainable development in order to guide the SME succession and transformation toward the direction of “professionalism,” “branding,” and “internationalization.”