SME'S SUPPORT AND REGIONAL POLICY IN EU - THE NORTE-LITORAL PORTUGUESE EXPERIENCE

• There is evidence that a large majority of small firms applications to EU funds are
structured to meet their ‘perceived strategic needs’. Our study emphasises
modernisation investments as the answer of small firms to environment competitive
change that fits their cognitive framework.

The conclusions as above summarised have some policy implications that we can put in
abridged form:

• As for industrial policy, it is crucial to speed up the paradigm change of
competitiveness that remains rooted in SME’s culture. Taking stock of the
theoretical framework expressed in the previous points, it is necessary to build a
network architecture of real interventions directed to regional ‘infrastructure’ and
‘infostructure’, rather than to generic financial support to firms (cf. Bramanti and
Maggioni, 1997:335). The complexity of this new model “requires that industrial
policies are defined and implemented at a regional level, in order to adapt to the
very specific characteristics of each production and technological system.” (cf.
Cappellin, 1995:20);

• Innovation policy must address the new challenges of the knowledge economy and
should be guided by a deep understanding of the firms' needs. The competitive
weaknesses of small firms ask for an enlarged concept of innovation that, besides
I&D, must address commercial and organisational dimensions. Once more, the
complexity of these new dimensions requires a regional level of policy
management, in line with recent experiences of “Regional Innovation Strategies” in
other regions of EU (CE, 1999:101);

• Regional policy needs a new paradigm guided by the concepts of ‘systems
complexity’ and ‘collective learning’. This means that the effectiveness of industrial
and innovation policies require an autonomous territorial governance, a regional
policy conducted by the regions, backed by national policies, and oriented to the
promotion of ‘learning by interacting’ so that the Norte-Litoral milieu engages in a
path to become an innovative milieu (Maillat and Kebir, 1999).

To highlight the spirit of this paper we finish with a quotation from a distinguished
professor of marketing (Ford, 2000): "The unit of analysis is not the sale, product,
market, project or territory. It's relationship."

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