– by Abdella Kosa – Designed by Snowing Entrepreneurship provides small businesses with the ability to discover new business opportunities (Omisakin et al. 2016). Individuals decide to discover, evaluate, and exploit these opportunities because of different supportive factors. One of the individual conditions that determines entrepreneurial engagement is an entrepreneurial passion which plays a great role in the entrepreneurial process of discovering and exploiting profitable opportunities. Even if passion has a great impact on entrepreneurial engagement; it may not be successful without con ..read more

– by Dr. Maksim Belitski & Dr. David Audretsch – Photo by Philipp Birmes on Pexels.com Regional economic development and entrepreneurship are driven by the quality of life in modern cities. Understanding what contributes to higher quality of life perception will help policy-makers to attract the most bright and highly-skilled workers and their families, retain existing human capital and young people to live and work in a city. To this end, understanding the link between subjective well-being and entrepreneurship in cities has been a priority for scholars and regional policy makers w ..read more

– The China IPR SME Helpdesk –  designed by Jannoon028 – Freepik.com Innovative technology that is used in consumer products can be protected under invention or design patents in China, but this will not offer 100% protection against others illegally using the innovations in knock-off products, particularly while the patent is still pending. However, when it comes to products with functional technology, consumers are sensitive to quality. It is therefore beneficial to think about other ways to convince potential customers that your goods are the best in the market. Updating designs can ..read more

– Giovanni Zazzerini – Innovation per se doesn’t automatically translate into economic benefits. To profit from innovation firms need to convert it into viable products or services while also having the capacity to protect the innovation against imitators. This is the appropriability problem I’ll try to address in what follows. Innovation is the main source for companies’ competitiveness. Through innovation SMEs can differentiate their offerings in the market, gain a competitive advantage and escape from the so-called commodity trap, i.e. low-price pressures that flow from emerging countries ..read more

– by Dr. Christian Schröder – It is often lamented that small and mid-sized companies show greater deficits in the implemention of Industry 4.0 compared to big companies. We wanted to know if this impression is correct or not: we examined the relationship between different firm-specific factors and the degree to which small and medium-sized enterprises digitized their business processes in the manufacturing sector in the three German federal states North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, and Baden-Wuerttemberg. We measured the degree of digital interconnection between the business units as well ..read more

– by South-East Asia IPR SME Helpdesk – Underpinned by the fast development, South-East Asia is offering many business opportunities for European SMEs. At the same time, a clear vision of an IP strategy in South-East Asia can impact a company’s growth and prevent loss of revenue further down the road. Taking the time to collect IP information on local practice can help SMEs exploit opportunities or avoid pitfalls by taking informed decisions in a new market. During the latest International Helpdesks Annual Stakeholders Meeting in Brussels, IP experts discussed main IP related challenges in So ..read more

– by Edita Bagdonaite – How many participants of Horizon 2020 SME Instrument are in Lithuania? What are the elements of the formula of participation success? We searched for answers to these and other questions together with the clientele of the Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA), or more precisely with true like-minded people who managed to find their own formula of success and agreed to share their good practice. We are pleased to introduce the participants in the debate and the elements of the formula of success discovered by them. CLEAR VISION AND A BOLD FIRST MOVE ..read more

– by Héctor O. Pralong, Angel F. Hernaiz, José L. Sebastian – Introduction It is a duty of the Government to encourage horizontal links among institutions that are committed towards creating a structural base for the National System of Innovation (SIN) in each discipline. In order to let innovation happen there must be networks and connections between actors. Therefore an agile and proactive State is required. A State that promotes actions that make innovations possible instead of waiting until they occur. One that takes risks, that catalyzes and leads investments, creating working netwo ..read more

– by Sarah Daren – The business landscape is always changing. Leading companies thrive by embracing and cultivating a culture of innovation that leads to evolved and improved operations, strategies, product offerings, service offerings, and processes. American business leaders that acknowledge and encourage innovation find themselves ahead of the competition that refuses to establish a culture of innovation. Businesses across the country spend significant amounts of money in an attempt to foster the type of innovation that leads to success. In just one year the United States spends $499 ..read more

– by Ines Haberl – SMEs are the backbone of Europe’s economy, and substantially contribute to growth and job creation, due to their innovative role and growth potential. About 23 million SMEs are generating € 3.9 trillion in value added and employ 90 million people. Although their participation in the Framework Programmes (FPs) has increased during the past years, SMEs still need support for getting involved in projects that will bring their research to commercially exploitable innovative products and services and will therefore contribute to sustainable socio-economic value for European cit ..read more