Existing strategy frameworks are designed for bigger
firms with plentiful resources. They should not be
liberally borrowed and advanced as solutions for SMEs,
who face resource constraint. This very lack of
resources impacts the competitive strategies that are
feasible to SMEs. What’s more, the current literature in
SME strategy fails to take into consideration potential
competitive reactions from market incumbents in
prescribing competitive strategies for SMEs. By ignoring
competitive reactions, the literature therefore has no
answers to questions about how bigger incumbent firms
will respond when the market niches served by SMEs grow
to a substantial size or become very lucrative. Nor does
the current literature provide any strategic
prescriptions for SMEs as to how they could compete
successfully against bigger rivals who possess superior
resources. pdf
