Background Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have played key roles in the economic growth and technical innovation of traditional and complementary and alternative medicine (T&CM). Research and development (R&D) are critical activities for industrial progress. This study aimed to characterize the current status of SME R&D activities and to explore manufacturers' perceptions of R&D expa...

This paper presents a model for effective planning of support services for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The idea is to scrutinize and measure the suitability of support services in order to give recommendations for the improvement of a support planning process. We examined the applied support services and matched them with the problems and needs of SMEs, based on the survey conduc...

E-commerce has been predicted to be a new driver of economic growth for developing countries. The SME sector plays a significant role in its contribution to the national economy in terms of the wealth created and the number of people employed. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt represent the greatest share of the productive units of the Egyptian economy and the current national policy...

This paper explores the software processes and usability techniques used by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that develop web applications. The significance of this research is that it looks at development processes used by SMEs in order to assess to what degree usability is integrated into the process. This study seeks to gain an understanding into the level of awareness of usability within...

Over the past 30 years, China's rapid growth of economy has been benefited from the tremendous contribution of SMEs, especially in foreign trade. However, the greatest impact of the financial crisis on China is on exports, and SMEs unavoidably is suffering hardest hit from it. Therefore, it is necessary to examine how SMEs participate in international trade under the new environment thereby con...

The aim of this paper is to study the management of Information Technology (IT) security in Kenyan Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Particularly, this study looks at whether SMEs have a designated employee in charge of IT security, whether SMEs seek external expertise about IT security where it is not internally available and if employees are aware that IT security incidents should be repor...

E-business technologies, whereby business transactions are conducted remotely using the Internet, present unique opportunities and challenges for business. E-business technologies are applicable to a wide range of organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are no exception. There is an established body of literature about e-business, looking at definitions, concepts, benefits a...

This whitepaper discusses the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore it contains subjects like internationalization of SMEs in the time of globalization, reasons for internationalization, SMEs’ motives for internationalization, different forms and models of SMEs internationalization and dealing with internationalization by SMEs. INTERNATIONALIZATION OF SMES IN T...

Purpose –Foreign market entry is considered as a key strategy to grow and survive over longer period of time for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The decision to enter in a foreign market is not a straight forward story. Considering the resource limitation, SMEs need to analyse the key barriers to enter in foreign markets very carefully. The purpose of this paper is to identify these ba...

The focus in this paper is on conditions for ICT use in SMEs expressed as formative infrastructure. Questions concern needs for infrastructure among SMEs, actors roles, and concepts constituting a formative infrastructure for ICT-adoption and use. Few – if any – studies, take the perspective of SMEs’ needs for infrastructure concerning use of ICT. A formative ICT infrastructure is constituted b...