Abstract:
In all economies, especially in developing and transition economies, there is now a consensus among state policy makers, development economists as well as international development partners that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are a potent driving force for their industrial growth and indeed, overall economic development. In recent times, the concept of Big Data has been seen as a new solution to help in policy and practice in all sorts of application context and domains. The impact of abundance data collected and stored over a number of years by various organisations both public and private has led to many innovative data analytics technologies. The thrust of this paper therefore is focusing on SME growth, that is, how to assist regional small business growth using Big Data. Harnessing big data practice for SME growth has potential to challenge current decision making and policy initiatives both at the government level (macro), as well as at the SME level (micro). Thispaper will assess the extent to which Big Data can be harnessed for SME growth; and develop a systems based method for making intervention based on Big Data practice for SME growth.
