Entrepreneurship and the Profit Zone Concept: Why Profit Models Theory doesn’t Fit in the Small Firm’s World

Small businesses have now become the economic motor growth of numerous countries and regions, as it is the case for the United State and the majority of Canadian provinces. SME scientific literature is now a Business Management discipline of and this field of research agrees on one thing; strategic planning and managing of that type of businesses would be different from the one used by larger sized firms. Yet, new business models identified today and more specifically the profit zone model were often developed from studies conducted on large-scale American enterprises. The aim of this article is to demonstrate some convergences and divergences about the profit zone model applied to the SME context. In fact, we will find out (1) that if profit zone models are present in SME, these same profit models are not part of the cognitive territory of small business presidents and managers, (2) there exist, depending on the industry, significant divergences with regard to profit models selected, (3) that SME managers are able to positioned themselves among the 22 different profit models identified by Slywotzky & Morrison (1997) and (4) that if, from a strategic standpoint, large enterprises must generally focus on one or two profit model, the picture is totally different with SME