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The paradigm shift in global competition and the resulting business challenges have led manufacturing enterprises, particularly in the developing world, to take a different look at their operations. Responding to this climate meant reassessing their competitive advantage, and re‐engineering their business models and operations. The purpose of this paper is to discuss many of these new challenges and present potential solutions from the practitioner point of view.

This paper discusses many of these new challenges and presents potential solutions. The results are from interviews with the enterprise managers and owners.

The issues are divided into three categories based on who can manipulate them: regional and international, national, and enterprise factors. The level of enterprises' ability to respond to these issues varies from full control to partial or no control. Nevertheless, issues' impact could be minimized by certain adopted polices and action plans.

The paper creates a guiding compass for developing countries' manufacturing enterprises, by which they can navigate around the arising challenges, in a well‐rounded, comprehensive overview.

The paper lays a foundation for a road map for researchers and practitioners to assist small and medium‐sized enterprises in becoming more competitive and improving their survivability, in a well‐rounded, comprehensive way.