SMEs in Europe employ around 100 million people and account for more than half of of Europe's GDP.
SMEs in Europe employ around 100 million people and account for more than half of Europe’s GDP . As such, SMEs are a main backbone of the European economy and play a key role in providing innovations to address economic, societal, and environmental challenges related to climate change, digitalisation, healthcare, circular economy, and social cohesion across regions. However, evidence shows obstacles for SMEs related to growth and international development, barriers to enter new markets, access to finance, low R&D&I intensity, lack of skills and administrative burdens. Many of these problems stem from the lack of solid international partners. Such barriers become even greater when looking beyond the European Union. Therefore, there is a need for policies and bottom-up initiatives directly targeting SMEs and helping them to internationalise as well as contribute to covering the high costs linked to innovation.
Currently, several obstacles to SME innovation may hinder SME’s innovative growth and thus negatively impact not only on possible SME contributions to EU growth but also on :
SME competitiveness and internationalisation, where the small size of SMEs, with a consequent lack of financial and human resources, is a strong barrier to entering new markets.
SME research and development capabilities, so that limited innovation in many enterprises make SME products less competitive in external markets.
SME company performance, evident in the fact that in comparison with large enterprises SMEs perform worse in terms of turnover and value-added.
This is where the partnership can help. Based on the consortium’s former experience and efforts while running the Eurostars-1 and Eurostars-2 (FP7 and H2020) programmes, the new European Partnership on Innovative SMEs will help to stimulate SME innovation. There is a need for policies and bottom-up initiatives directly targeting SMEs and helping them to internationalize as well as contribute to covering their often-high costs of innovation. The consortium will also reach out to, motivate, and try to include companies that currently do not (yet) plan any (international) innovation activities. Also, as the Annual Report on European SMEs 2018/2019 concluded, all improvements in the overall innovation environment have important spill-over effects and stimulate SME innovation across the European Union. So, linking to all relevant existing and new EU initiatives will also be a key part of the work. These spill-over effects will also contribute to a broader adoption of breakthrough technologies, disruptive innovations, and new business model via commercialization in foreign markets and knowledge exchange and mutual learning between SMEs and other innovation actors within the funded consortia.
