SMEs in Global Market: Challenges, Opportunities and Threats

Globalisation is a source of opportunities as well as a source of threats. Specific advantages derived from operating in a global market seem to be exploitable only by large organisations unless Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) can find an organisational solution allowing them to cope with global business opportunities without suffering from limited resources and without exposing themselves to the risk of direct investment. In the European experience, regional clusters of SMEs have turned into competitive advantage a peculiar - both at once competitive and co-operative - relationship, strongly based on geographical proximity and on cultural affinity. Thanks to recent developments in information technology, the replication of a similar industrial model might, in principle, be achieved in spatially distributed manufacturing processes. A proposal for the framework of a distributed network specifically devoted to small- and medium-sized firms is discussed; existing features of local clusters of SMEs are reviewed to evaluate to what extent their experiences might facilitate the implementation of a spatially distributed production process.