The objective of this study was to analyze the reasons why a business could sustain its life. The approaches used were industrial based approach and micro business unit approach. The sampling method was purposive sampling combined by convenience sampling technique.The amount of samples were 100. The method of analysis used were nonparametric statistics and regression analysis. The study found that the innovation power of SMEs in Semarang was quite small (around 5%). This finding was expected to benefit business actors in Indonesia, namely to help increase innovation power so that their businesses could survive and continue to exist.