They represent:
- 99,8% of all European enterprises
- 67,1% of private sector jobs
What can we do to support their success - Europe's success?
1. ease their number 1 problem - administrative burden
2. create a better single market - space to grow in
3. create 0-investment and 0-ITskill-demanding digital tools (like e-invoicing)
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4 comments:
Dear Bo
why not follow the lead given in "Five Steps For Finland" and create a network of SME owners exchanging ideas about such topics? You´d probably need retired SEM owners because the others have no time, but that can be dealt with.
The trick is in the benchmarking.
If this forum had any results, then it would be time to include politicians.
Of course these would have to be face meetings, supported by IT, rather than online affairs.
Best
Wolfgang
Dear Wolfgang,
I do agree that we would need more focus on the issue from the SME-angle.
My hope has been that existing SME organizations would see the big picture for EU and the SME-specific benefits and give mass digitalization the top priority it deserves.
Progress is being made -but we need to progress on all fronts - focused networks, banks, service providers and politicians already today.
Dear Bo
there are two issues here I think: one is abstract, i.e. new tools for knowledge representation, data storage, communication, social networking etc.; much of this is available and would "only" need integrating. The Obama campaing has, I think, given new prominence to technological tools in politics, and the fact that his Webmaster, Chris Hughes, was a founder of Facebook cannot be an accident.
The other is personal: we need to imagine new platforms where charismatic politicians a la Obama can emerge. This is a media subject, and a fascinating one.
Neither of these is trivial.
Oh, and another thing
the commercial organizations here (for instance), the Handelkammern, have mandatory membership for most SMEs. If they had to sell such m embership, they would immediately be more active in advising the SMEs on Europe´s potential.
The EU should propose abolishing such mandatory membership, which is in effect a tax, not because that tax is too high - it is not - but to promote efficiency.
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