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Industry and entrepreneurship
Understanding SME heterogeneity
Towards policy relevant typologies for SMEs and entrepreneurship: An OECD Strategy
for SMEs and Entrepreneurship
The heterogeneity and highly diverse nature of the SMEs population represent a core
challenge for SME policy frameworks. This paper discusses if and how typologies can
help policy makers to better understand the wide diversity of SMEs and entrepreneurs.
It proposes a policy perspective for analysing typologies, and reviews 169 typologies
to assess their relevance for policy making. The paper presents a number of actionable
typologies, as examples of how policy relevant SME and entrepreneurship typologies
could be developed. The paper was developed in the context of the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship
Strategy.