Prioritizing the Factors Affecting High-Tech SME's Success - A Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (ANP) Approach

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in economic development of countries. It has been estimated that about 80 percent of world economic growth is created by SMEs. However, a high percentage of small businesses fail in the early years of their establishment. Meanwhile, because of changing technology and also the need for high initial capital, high-tech SME's face a more difficult situation. This paper aims to develop a mathematical model in order to determine the factors affecting high-tech SME's success and also to prioritize these factors. Considering the large number of factors and also existence of correlation, Analytic Network Process (ANP) method is employed to analyze the data and determine the relative importance of the factors affecting the success of High-Tech SMEs. Considering, the uncertainty associated with the qualitative judgment of decision makers, collecting of the experts, judgments was carried out by using linguistic scales. Accordingly data analysis was carried out by using fuzzy set theory. With the factor weights found via ANP, it can be determined which factor has a greater effect on high-tech SME's successes. Based on the results obtained, the first three important main factors in SME's success are: "business policies and regulation", "technology-related factor" and "entrepreneurs, characteristics" with the weights of O0.194, O0.141 and O0.135 respectively.