This report was produced by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE) led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director. It is part of the Programme of Work of the OECD’s Committee on SMEs and Entrepreneurship (CSMEE).
The report summarises the findings of the first part of an OECD project on “Unleashing SME potential to scale up”, co‑funded by the European Commission (EC). It provides new evidence on scalers based on a novel analysis of detailed firm-level data in a pilot implemented in Finland, Italy, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Spain. A forthcoming report complements the analytical work by mapping selected policy initiatives relevant for scalers across OECD countries.
The OECD Secretariat would like to thank Ludger Odenthal, Markus Hell and Borut Ložar of the EC Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) for their input and support throughout the project. The analysis in this report would not have been possible without the help of national experts (Pontus Lindroos, Statistics Finland; Antonio Accetturo and Andrea Linarello, Bank of Italy; Vladimir Peciar, Ministry of Finance, Slovak Republic; Aitor Lacuesta and Eduardo Gutierrez, Bank of Spain) to whom the OECD Secretariat extends its thanks for providing advice and data on scale-up dynamics in their country. Advice and comments at different stages of the project were also received from delegates of the CSMEE, Participants of the European Commission’s Working Group on Policy-relevant Research on Entrepreneurship and SME and the European Union SME Envoys, Alex Coad (Waseda University), Mercedes Teruel (Universitat Rovira i Virgili), as well as from OECD (and former OECD) colleagues, in particular Nadim Ahmad, Mattia Corbetta, Lucia Cusmano, Andres Fuentes Hutfilter, Shayne Maclachlan, Bruno de Menna, Joaquim Oliveira Martins, Andrew Paterson, Lora Pissareva, Alessandra Proto, Paolo Veneri and Alison Weingarden.
The project was co‑ordinated by Alexander C. Lembcke and Sandrine Kergroach, Heads of Unit in CFE, under the supervision of Rudiger Ahrend, Head of Division, Economic Analysis, Data and Statistics, and Celine Kauffman, Head of Division, Entrepreneurship, SMEs and Tourism in CFE. The report was prepared by Carlo Menon and Lenka Wildnerova with significant inputs by Julian Emmler, Hoang Thanh (Mai) Nguyen and Maria Reis.
Thanks are also due to Pilar Philip for editorial support and Eleonore Morena for formatting the manuscript.