IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/intere/v54y2019i6d10.1007_s10272-019-0855-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Young SMEs as a Motor of Europe’s Innovation Machine

Author

Listed:
  • Reinhilde Veugelers

    (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

  • Annalisa Ferrando

    (European Central Bank)

  • Senad Lekpek

    (European Investment Bank)

  • Christoph T. Weiss

    (European Investment Bank)

Abstract

Using large scale EIB Investment Survey evidence for 2016 covering 8,900 non-financial firms from all size and age classes across all sectors and all EU member states, the authors identify different innovation profiles based on a firm’s R&D investment and/or innovation activities. Basic firms — i.e. firms that do not engage in any type of R&D or innovation — are more common among young SMEs, while innovators — i.e. firms that do R&D and introduce new products, processes or services — are more often old and large firms. This holds particularly for ‘leading innovators’, which introduce innovations new to the market. To further explore why young SMEs are not more active in innovation, the authors explore their access to finance. It is concluded that young small leading innovators are the most likely to be credit constrained. Public grants seem to at least partially address the external financing access problem for leading innovators, but not for young SMEs.

Suggested Citation

  • Reinhilde Veugelers & Annalisa Ferrando & Senad Lekpek & Christoph T. Weiss, 2019. "Young SMEs as a Motor of Europe’s Innovation Machine," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 54(6), pages 369-377, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:intere:v:54:y:2019:i:6:d:10.1007_s10272-019-0855-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s10272-019-0855-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10272-019-0855-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10272-019-0855-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cathles, Alison & Nayyar, Gaurav & Rückert, Désirée, 2020. "Digital technologies and firm performance: Evidence from Europe," EIB Working Papers 2020/06, European Investment Bank (EIB).
    2. Rückert, Désirée & Veugelers, Reinhilde & Weiss, Christoph, 2020. "The growing digital divide in Europe and the United States," EIB Working Papers 2020/07, European Investment Bank (EIB).
    3. Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello, 2022. "Top R&D investors, structural change and the R&D growth performance of young and old firms," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 12(1), pages 1-33, March.
    4. Samuel Amponsah Odei & Jan Stejskal & Viktor Prokop, 2021. "Revisiting the Factors Driving Firms’ Innovation Performances: the Case of Visegrad Countries," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 12(3), pages 1331-1344, September.
    5. Veugelers Reinhilde & Faivre Clémence & Rückert Désirée & Weiss Christoph, 2023. "The Green and Digital Twin Transition: EU vs US Firms," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Sciendo, vol. 58(1), pages 56-62, January.
    6. Fuzhong Chen & Haifeng Li & Huini Wei & Wani Nelson, 2022. "The Ownership, Innovation, and Sustainable Development of Micro and Small Enterprises: Evidence of China," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(4), pages 21582440221, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:intere:v:54:y:2019:i:6:d:10.1007_s10272-019-0855-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.