Major streams of research examining entrepreneurs in the formal economy have documented content and process of new venture establishment. Yet, research examining entrepreneurial success in the informal economy is limited. If entrepreneurship is to become an intervention leading to sustainable economic development it is important to better understand the content and process of new venture development in the informal sector. Due to the paucity of research examining the process of successful microentrepreneurs in developing, informal economies, we selected a qualitative research approach as the most effective method to identify emergent themes. The grounded theory methodology allowed the research subjects themselves to bring forward the key issues in their success.

The research process began with the identification of groups of successful and less-successful microentrepreneurs throughout the Philippines. We use the term "less-successful" in our research, not to be politically correct, but because research has established that the process of successful entrepreneurship almost invariably includes periods of failure. The main data collection activity followed a focus group format. A single facilitator led the participants through a series of activities which asked them to identify and discuss various traits and business principles necessary for entrepreneurial success in the Philippines.

For data analysis, the researchers conducted a line-by-line content analysis of the transcripts and open-coded the data for key topics or themes (Priest, 2002: 36). The open-coding was followed by an axial analysis for similarities and differences between the groups (Spiggle, 1994). Throughout the process, the authors looked for common themes emerging from the data (Goulding, 2002). A concluding step in the data analysis was selective coding, wherein the researchers focused on a few core categories around which to build the grounded theory framework (Priest, 2002). Theory development, data collection, analytical methods, and results will be presented in the symposium.