Author(s)

A. Federici

Abstract

The role of small and medium enterprises in the innovation process has become a fundamental policy issue because of the understanding that innovation is the key to economic development for the most developed countries. The focus of the work is on a sample of 518 high tech enterprises of Latium, whose innovative behaviour has been monitored by an ad hoc questionnaire. The results are encouraging: the sampled enterprises realize the primary role of innovation to gain competitiveness in the markets. The business of micro, small and medium enterprises has to be fostered and safeguarded through specific reforms able to play an effective role in the spread of innovation, the sharing of best practices and the support to less developed and troubled enterprises. Keywords: innovation, firm size, high tech sectors, questionnaire, Latium. 1 Introduction The role of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the innovation process has become a fundamental policy issue at regional, national and European level (European Commission [1, 2]), because of the understanding that innovation is the key to economic development for the most developed countries: a huge number of empirical analysis have highlighted the remarkable and growing contribution of SMEs to total innovation output (Pavitt et al. [3], Acs and Audretsch [4], Wood [5], Nauwelaers and Wintjes [6], Hodgkinson and McPhee [7]). In Europe, 99,8% of firms are SMEs: this paper focus the attention on a sample of 518 micro (1–9 employees), small (10–49), medium (50–249) and few

Keywords

innovation, firm size, high tech sectors, questionnaire, Latium.