This report examines international policy experiences in designing and implementing online business diagnostic tools for SME and entrepreneurship development. These tools offer entrepreneurs and small business managers an individual online assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of their...

This paper takes stock of one year of policy responses to the 2022/2023 energy crisis triggered by Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this paper, "SME policy responses" are defined as all government policies, whether...

Digitalisation has triggered a profound transformation of the retail sector, primarily composed of SMEs. While retail businesses are embracing more hybrid practices of managing online and brick-and-mortar channels, getting more traditional SME retailers fit for the hybrid era could open up new...

We analyze the effects of captive off-shoring of innovation activities on the firms’ ability to adapt its organizational structures. Basing our arguments on complexity theory, we use three consecutive waves of the German part of the Community Innovation Survey to test our hypotheses. We find...

This paper draws on observations from a long-established network in France, located around the town of Cognac – site of distilled beverages with the same name. Firms within this network have been successful in developing new types of products in the past decades, drawing on and diverging from...

While the distinction between manufacturing and services becomes increasingly blurred to some observers, we find, using a panel of Swedish firms, clear evidence that foreign sales (exports) are more important than domestic sales for stimulating R&D. This is particularly clear for manufacturing...

This paper analyzes various innovation strategies of firms. Using five waves of the Community Innovation Survey in Sweden, we have traced the innovative behavior of firms over a ten-year period, i.e. between 2002 and 2012. We distinguish between sixteen innovation strategies, which compose of...

The main question that guides this paper is how governments are focusing (and must focus) on competence building (education and training) when designing and implementing innovation policies. With this approach, the paper aims at filling the gap between the existing literature on competences on...

The proximity concept refers to types of inter-organizational relationships that are expected to facilitate interactive learning and collaborative innovation. Different forms of proximity include geographical, cognitive, social, institutional and organizational proximity. Following an extensive...

This paper has three aims. Firstly, to provide a critical review of previous conceptualizations of the knowledge base approach in the research fields of innovation studies and economic geography. Secondly, to propose a broadened interpretation of the knowledge base approach which allows for...