Competitive Strategies for Small and Medium Enterprises : Increasing Crisis Resilience, Agility and Innovation in Turbulent Times

This book is a timely guide for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) researchers, policy makers and strategists. SMEs are the most important sources of job creation and local development especially in knowledge-based economies. As turbulence in the globalized economies expands SMEs will have to learn to sustain competitiveness by developing their ‘dynamic capabilities’. Based on the findings of a 4-year European and Latin American research project, this book provides a theoretical framework, practical instruments and cases on how SMEs in diverse economic, social and cultural contexts can develop crisis resilience, increase agility, innovate and thus successfully compete in turbulent times.

Dr. Klaus North is Professor of International Management at Wiesbaden Business School, Germany. His current research covers knowledge and innovation management in an international context. He has been working for more than 30 years in SME assistance programmes around the world and leads the European-Latin American research project “Dynamic SME - Sustainable competitiveness of SMEs in turbulent economic and social environments.” Together with Gita Kumta (Mumbai) he is the author of the Springer (2014) textbook “Knowledge Management – Creating Value by Organisational Learning”.

Gregório Jean Varvakis Rados, PhD is Professor and Head of postgraduate courses in the Department of Engineering and Knowledge Management at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, UFSC, Florianópolis, Brasil. He holds a PhD in Manufacturing Engineering from Loughborough University, England. He has been a consultant at McKINSEY LTDA. His research covers Knowledge and service management with special attention to productivity improvement through BPM. He is co-leader of the Dynamic SME project.