Skills for 21st Century MSMEs:
Backdrop:
India’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) base is the largest in the world after China.
The sector provides a wide range of services and is engaged in the manufacturing of over 6,000 products – ranging from traditional to hi-tech items.
Given the government of India’s latest ‘Make in India’ push, along with a significant jump in the FDI flows, the Indian MSMEs sector is poised for rapid growth and integration with major global value chains.
As per the official estimates, there are about 63.05 million micro industries, 0.33 million small, and about 5,000 medium enterprises in the country.
The state of Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of estimated MSMEs with a share of 14.20 percent of the total MSMEs in the country. West Bengal comes as close second with a share of 14 percent, followed by Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra at eight percent. Source : https://www.india-briefing.com/news/micro-small-medium-enterprises-india-explainer-17887.html/
Challenges:
There are numerous challenges to the sector, and every enterprise is unique in its vulnerabilities. The biggest challenge is the rapid change in the external environment, driven by emerging technologies as well as global geo-political events such as the climate crisis or the most recent coronavirus pandemic. There is no ‘ panacea’ for the problems of any MSME enterprise, but possession of a suite of skills can help mitigate many problems. I have listed below 10 important skills which are mainly in the realm of emerging technologies. For real success, the leadership/ownership team will also have to be supplemented with human dispositions of risk taking, creativity, empathy, resilience…. and so on.
There is a well known list from World Economic Forum of the 10 most valuable skills for 2015 and then how they change for 2020: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/
The list of skills that I have listed are more basic, and relevant to our context, where we are still in the process of transformation to a ‘ digital India’. Not everyone must acquire or master all these, but all should be ready to learn them should the need or opportunity arise.
1: Office automation and productivity skills
2: Web and Internet skills
3: Social Media Skills
4: Safety/ security/ password skills
5: Digital Media marketing skills
6: IoT awareness and understanding
7: 3-D printing
8: Augmented Reality
9: AI related skills: RPA, data, voice, vision
10: Search and research skills
Goals :
The most important and critical ability for success in the foreseeable future is the ability to learn by oneself, to become an autonomous learner with enhanced learning power.
1: Learning how to learn ( launch a learning community for MSMEs)
2: Building a financial safety net ( both personal and for the business)
3: Enhancing customer base ( deploying digital marketing skills)
4: Increasing customer satisfaction ( using AI and other technologies for personalisation, and ameliorating any deficiencies in customer experiences)
5: Innovation and continuous improvement ( disruptive innovation as well)
MAYA : the 4 letter code for selling anything : https://youtu.be/6pY7EjqD3QA
Most advanced yet acceptable
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