STUDY AIMS TO LEARN LESSONS IN SUPPORT FOR SMALL FIRMSMarch 16, 1999The two-year study, for which JETS has grant funding of £134,675 from the European Community, will evaluate the competitiveness of European SMEs as compared with their counterparts in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Enterprise benchmarking will be used to identify the nature of the technological differences in selected low, medium and high technology manufacturing activities. The project will look at the differences in comparable activities and trace these to variations in a range of factors, such as staff and management; links with and support from other SMEs and larger enterprises; government support for productivity and skill development; and financial support for technological and other innovation. 'Best practice' models of SME technology development will be identified from detailed analysis of firms, and this will help in looking at the causes of deviation from the standard. Says JETS researcher Dr Simon Collinson: "This will clarify the nature of the emerging competitive challenge facing European enterprises from the Asian 'tigers' and the prospects for fruitful collaboration between them." The analysis of the support systems in Asia, known to be strong but not fully understood, will lead to policy recommendations for strengthening the science and technology support system for SMEs and improving the efficiency of networks and clusters of firms in strategic industries in Europe. Academics and researchers from Edinburgh, Oxford, Rome, Athens and Jerusalem will collaborate with partners in East Asia to obtain and assess data. Edinburgh, University of |
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