Barriers and opportunities for hi-tech innovative small and medium enterprises development in the 4th industrial revolution era

  • Received November 5, 2017;
    Accepted December 6, 2017;
    Published December 20, 2017
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.15(4).2017.09
  • Article Info
    Volume 15 2017, Issue #4, pp. 100-113
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High-tech innovative SMEs’ development plays crucial role in economic growth of every country. It creates new work places and infrastructure, motivates people for creating new ideas. At the same time, SMEs still face with a huge number of problems in the business performance. The purposes of the research are: to define main barriers for high-tech SMEs’ development in the 4th industrial revolution era (4IR); to work out recommendations for policy-makers towards intensification of SMEs’ potential.
For this purpose, the authors reviewed studies devoted to the SMEs’ innovative development and revealed that main barriers of SMEs’ development are related to inefficient government support in this sphere. In order to work out recommendations for Ukrainian policy-makers in the area of SMEs’ development, the authors conducted a survey of local high-tech SMEs and on the basis of SWOT-analysis distinguished the main directions for their further improvement. Finally, a set of recommendations for improving SMEs’ environment in Ukraine, taking into consideration the challenges of the 4th IR, was developed.

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    • Figure 1. Contribution of SMEs to GDP (middle values) (Growing the global economy through SMEs)
    • Figure 2. The Kauffman Index of startup activity (1997–2016)
    • Figure 3. Main obstacles for SMEs growth in developing countries (Wang, 2016)
    • Figure 4. Types of government support for development of innovations
    • Figure 5. Areas of surveyed small innovative business activity
    • Table 1. The number of enterprises, employment and value added by SMEs and large enterprises in the EU-28 in 2015
    • Table 2. SWOT-analysis of SME Development Policy Implementation in Ukraine, 2016
    • Table 3. Roadmaps of development strategies in different countries