The internationalization paths of European SMEs - The link between local commons and support services for going global

Abstract

Nowadays it is easy to get the impression that European economy is dominated by a few, large multinational companies. What is instead almost unkown to the majority of people is that in Europe 99% of all businesses is represented by Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and their role has not to be underestimated. Internationalization has been pointed out by European Commission as means to foster SMEs growth. As a matter of fact, in today's competitive and globalized world, SMEs must necessarily open up to foreign markets in order to survive. In this context, among the various modes of 'going global' that can be chosen by SMEs, it is interesting to explore the role of support services for internationalization. In particular, an innovative business model is one that allows consulting agencies to act as foreign branch offices of the companies they are assisting. This proves to be a valid alternative to the myriad of internationalization forms that can be found in the market, especially for medium enterprises that are better structured than small ones and can afford this kind of investment. It is therefore important, precisely in the context of Italian SMEs, both to take the advantages offered at local level, thanks to the embeddedness in an Industrial District, but also to open their value chain (not necessarily from the production side only) in order to start to compete at a global level.