Small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) continuously doing research & development (R&D) benefit from market innovations to a much higher extent than companies not engaging at all in their own R&D activities. This difference is particularly marked for companies launching completely new products or processes onto the market. In these cases the share of such innovations in the total turnover of companies not doing R&D amounts to about five percent on average. For companies engaging in constant research, however, this figure amounts to about 17 percent which is more than three times as much.
Continuous R&D has a particularly positive effect on small companies with up to 49 employees. But also companies with up to 499 staff doing R&D on a regular basis are still benefiting markedly more than those not engaging at all in such activities. This is one major finding of a current study by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany, which deals with “Factors for success in innovation management of small and medium-sized entities”. The study is available online for free-of-charge-download. 