Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a pivotal role in accelerating Thai economic development. SMEs
provide backward linkages for large enterprises through supply of goods, services, information and
knowledge. Despite SMEs obvious significance, they face several severe difficulties that act as obstacles to
their further development. The primary motivation of this study is to upon identifying: 1) the role,
significance and contribution of Thai manufacturing SMEs to the Thai economy; 2) entrepreneur
characteristics (age, gender, education, work experience); and (3) innovation (new products, processes,
organization structure)