ABSTRACT
In the context of industrial strategies for competitiveness, this chapter is particularly concerned with policies for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).2 Our decision to focus on SMEs is governed by a number of factors, most notably, the increasingly important role that SMEs are playing in terms of their share of economic activity; their role in innovation; their rate of job creation and their contribution to the dynamism and growth of successful regional economies such as the Third Italy and Baden-Württemberg. In addition to these points, we argue that the incorporation of an integrated strategy for SMEs into current mainstream European industrial policy is necessary in order to prevent a conflict of interest between the Commission’s twin objectives of the promotion of industrial co-operation and fair competition (CEC 1994a). Consideration and inclusion of an industrial strategy for SMEs point to a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach to industrial policy and this raises a number of issues concerning subsidiarity and the most appropriate level at which to implement policy (see also Piera Magnatti in Chapter 11).
