Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that scale up, and particularly high-growth firms, make an important contribution to job creation and economic growth in OECD countries. However, despite their importance and the considerable policy interest they attract, there remain significant knowledge gaps, hampering the ability of governments to provide effective scale up support and create the right business conditions for SMEs to grow. The project contributes to advancing knowledge in the field.
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Why a project on "scaling up"? High-growth firms are rare, but make an important contribution to job creation. However, little is known about the factors that enable or prevent firms to scale up, especially older and established SMEs, and equally little is known about firms’ performance after a growth phase. By focusing on the growth process and looking into changes in firm scale in traditional and novel dimensions, the pilot action will renew understanding on the drivers and barriers to sustainable scaling up. Governments worldwide have put strong emphasis on enabling their many small businesses – both young and established – to scale up activities and grow. As digitalisation and globalisation increasingly enable firms to reach scale without mass, new policy approaches are considered that require re-conceptualising scaling up dynamics. This pilot project will contribute to better understanding the policy mix for start-up and SMEs scaling up.
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PROJECT PILLARS: Measurement and Policy
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OBJECTIVE Allow policy makers to better understand the trends, drivers and barriers, as well as the policy approaches that matter for SME scale up.
NEXT MILESTONE Q4 2021 – Measurement report The results of the first phase of this project, summarised in Understanding Firm Growth: Helping SMEs Scale Up, shows the potential of leveraging a more diverse set of data sources – e.g. microdata or other non-traditional (and non-official) data – to better understand the diverse growth pathways of SMEs and “scalers. Q1 2022 – Policy report Leveraging the findings of the measurement work, the project will advance knowledge on how policy makers can create the conditions for SME scaling up and provide them with benchmarking tools in order to identify cross-country commonalities, differences and good policy practices through a mapping of relevant policies and institutions across the OECD area in two policy domains: access to scale up finance, and SME data governance (access, protection and use of data). |
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JOINING THE PROJECT Countries are invited to the pilot project on SMEs scaling up. Measurement and analysis Policy mapping and analysis |
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CONTACT
For more information about the project or to get involved, please contact:
Alexander C. Lembcke: Alexander.LEMBCKE@oecd.org
Sandrine Kergroach: Sandrine.KERGROACH@oecd.org
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