Decision-support for entrepreneurial firms: making the best business investments

Our main aim is to develop a robust empirical model of the innovative small firm, which explains its performance by structural variables, intellectual property, and research support, within the firm. Our secondary aim is to use this model to develop a new decision support tool, founded on a visualisation basis, based on an estimated version of our model. Once estimated, prototyped, tested and calibrated, this could help accountant to inform the owner managers of entrepreneurial SMEs about, and assist them in making, better decisions and thereby improve their firm’s performance. This work, sponsored by the IMA, should be of benefit to those in the profession, as well as accounting academics and researchers.