Competitive territories through internationalisation: SMEs competitiveness in globalised regions
COMPETE IN tackles SMEs’ internationalization: a key issue for SMEs growth at global scale that still present weaknesses, mainly due to high investments required and uncertainty of investments’ effectiveness. Regions can tackle this, by supporting SMEs’ internationalization via the international relations that each city/regions build, and by leveraging on the proximity they have to the territory. COMPETE IN will improve regional policies on internationalization of territories as a new approach to support EU SMEs’ engagement in international markets. The current situation presents a number of instruments supporting internationalization of single or group of SMEs, that in the long term prove to be not completely effective, since only 13% of EU SMEs is in 3rd markets. The project deploys a new methodology: approaching internationalization not by addressing uniquely SMEs, but by addressing the regional systems’ of distinctive competences, always bearing in mind that the final objective is to support SMEs internationalization. This entails a brand new shift towards a completely different approach that considers regions and cities as facilitator of internationalization processes, since they act as actors of governance of a set of local stakeholders that now have to cooperate to make regions (and not single SMEs) going international. Main results are improvements of internationalization policies and the creation of local cooperation process making all relevant stakeholders (SMEs, universities/research centres, trade associations, Chambers of Commerce, local/regional governmenst) acting as part of a regional system to be internationalized.