3.1. Specific objective

The specific objective is to stimulate sustainable economic growth by means of increasing the levels of innovation in SMEs, covering their different innovation needs over the whole innovation cycle for all types of innovation, thereby creating more fast-growing, internationally active SMEs. Considering the central role of SMEs in Europe's economy, research and innovation in SMEs will play a crucial role in increasing competitiveness, boosting economic growth and job creation and thus in achieving the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy and notably its flagship initiative 'Innovation Union'. However, SMEs have – despite their important economic and employment share and significant innovation potential – several types of problems to become more innovative and more competitive, including shortage of financial resources and access to finance, shortage in skills in innovation management, weaknesses in networking and cooperation with external parties, and insufficient use of public procurement to foster innovation in SMEs. Although Europe produces a similar number of start-up companies to the United States, European SMEs are finding it much harder to grow into large companies than their US counterparts. The internationalised business environment with increasingly interlinked value chains puts further pressure on them. SMEs need to enhance their research and innovation capacity. They need to generate, take up and commercialise new knowledge and business ideas faster and to a greater extent to compete successfully on fast evolving global markets. The challenge is to stimulate more innovation in SMEs, thereby enhancing their competitiveness, sustainability and growth. The proposed actions aim to complement national and regional business innovation policies and programmes, to foster cooperation between SMEs, including transnational cooperation, clusters and other innovation-relevant actors in Europe, to bridge the gap between R&D and successful market uptake, to provide a more business innovation friendly environment, including demand-side measures and measures geared to boosting the transfer of knowledge, and to support taking into account the changing nature of innovation processes, new technologies, markets and business models. Strong links with industry-specific Union policies, notably COSME and the Cohesion Policy Funds, will be established to ensure synergies and a coherent approach.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-03 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.