La proiezione internazionale delle PMI manifatturiere

The increasing competitive pressures arising from the emerging countries determine new challenges and pushing in particular small and medium enterprises (SMEs) towards the search for new paths of international development. Words such as exports, imports, internationalization seemed no more than a decade ago, issues which affected mainly medium and large enterprises and, ultimately, some small enterprises of excellence. Today, globalization is a threat to small enterprises, because of potential competition even in the local market by foreign companies, resulting in lower profit margins, or even of market exit, but also a real opportunity to extend their business in foreign markets. In particular, we are witnessing a resurgence of interest in a new form of regional policy. In the past, regional policy has attempted to make regions more competitive, attracting businesses to compete internationally, but with little success. Currently it’s outlining a new approach to regional development, mainly aimed at making domestic firms more competitive. This has placed an emphasis on internationalization of firms as a source of competitiveness, not only fundamental for the growth of the company's performance, but also for the attraction and staying in the territory of other factors more or less tangible. In this framework, starting with a brief overview of the main ways of internationalization in the contribution analysis is carried out based on results of field survey conducted by Unioncamere and Tagliacarne Institute on the relationship between the propensity to innovation and structural characteristics of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises as well as strategic and organizational aspects and response to the crisis of the latter.