Abstrait

Managing creativity in SMES: The importance of cultural and social capital.

Elvy Maria Manurung

The era of creativity presents a variety of new consumer needs. Consumers are getting smarter and choose to experience more on products they want. The competition gets tighter. Producers need to manage their creativity better, especially those among small and medium business. Many reasearches have been done on SMEs that focused on the lack of financial capital dan its access to loan from bank. However, research on SMEs bankcruptcy and its unreliabity to compete and stay competitive are still rare. This research is conducted with qualitative method using several case studies in small-medium businesses in West Java. Three SMEs are chosen to be observed and interviewed. The result show that one of three companies was bankcrupt. The case is different with one other company. Two businesses are survive not only because its focus on managing profit, but also because the owner is more concerned with managing creativity in form of accumulation of networking ?defined as social capital-- and cultural capital to sustain the business and win the competition.