This following is an overview of an article originally published and distributed on the IPwe Paradigm. 

Across the world, policy makers in national governments, private sector and civil society, increasingly recognize the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the private sector as engines of sustainable national economic growth, job creation and exports. As a result, creating a suitable enabling economic environment for the growth of SMEs has become a key policy focus in most countries. SMEs make significant contributions to productive investments, meaningful job creation, value-added exports and eventually to the overall socio-economic growth and development of countries. A lot still remains to be done to ensure that the SMEs are fully equipped to benefit from the new opportunities and to deal effectively with the challenges posed by the quickening pace of globalization and the digital revolution that is radically transforming the way industry and business are run. This new situation highlights the importance of knowledge management, management of the intangible digital content, comprising of information, data, knowledge or intellectual assets, as never before in the evolving history of industry and business worldwide.

In the European Union, SMEs represent 99% of enterprises, excluding the non-agricultural market sectors and they provide gainful employment to more than 100 million people, which constitutes two thirds of the private sector work force and generate almost two thirds of the total turnover of all non-agricultural market sectors.

In Asia and the Pacific region, SMEs account for 90% of enterprises and provide 32% to 40% of employment. SMEs also contribute from 60% to 80% of GDP in individual Asia/Pacific economies.

In the United States of America, employment in Fortune 500 companies continues to drop.

In Latin America, SMEs make up more than 98% of enterprises and employ more than 80% of the work force.

In Africa, it can be surmised that SMEs make up more than 90% of all business and employ a substantial number of people, especially in urban areas.

SMEs therefore, are at the heart of the economic well being of most nations and any action aimed at enhancing their competitiveness has the potential of not only securing existing jobs and creating new ones, but also of creating, owning and sharing the fruits of economic wealth by the majority of the population in every country and thereby improving the quality of the lives of the majority in every country. IPwe have developed a key free AI tool that could be used to achieve this goal the Paradigm Report, at the moment we are focused on EUSMEs however there is no reason why this AI cannot benefit any SME, anywhere in the world.

As I mentioned earlier ninety-nine percent of all companies in the European Union are small or medium enterprises (SMEs). These SMEs provide two-thirds of private sector jobs and contribute more than half of the total added value created by all businesses in the EU. Despite many initiatives to increase the competitiveness of SMEs, enable better access to finance and increase commercial opportunities, EU SMEs are still failing to attract significant investment from the financial markets and missing out on commercial opportunities.

SMEs consistently highlight access to finance as one of the most pressing problems adversely affecting their business activity. Some progress has been made in improving the availability of financing and credit for SMEs through the provision of loans, guarantees and venture capital, but access to finance is still the greatest obstacle faced by individual SMEs. Enterprise-level companies searching for commercial partners have no way to quickly identify the most innovative SMEs within a particular industry based on verified information.

One of the biggest roadblocks that innovative SMEs face in gaining access to finance and commercial partners is the difficulty that commercial and financial partners have in identifying those exceptional and innovative SMEs.

Large enterprises face the flip side of that challenge: it’s hard to identify the most innovative SMEs that would present excellent opportunities for strategic commercial partnerships which could benefit both firms.

IPwe Paradigm is revolutionizing this by making it easy to identify highly innovative SMEs for potential commercial and financial partners.

There are several well-known facts that researchers and the EU have identified about SMEs and intellectual property (IP)1:

• SMEs are the backbone of the European economy
• SMEs with IP are significantly more likely to experience growth and even become high growth firms (HGFs)
• Patent filings perform best as HGF predictors in both high-tech and low-tech industries and trademark filings perform best in consumer durable industries
• SMEs that have bundles of IP (patents, trademarks and other IP assets) are even more likely to achieve high growth.

Using game-changing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, IPwe has created an IP profile for EU SMEs that is publicly accessible and free. Each profile highlights the IPwe Paradigm Score which is an algorithmic-based score of the competitive strength of the SME’s patent portfolio within its industry.

IPwe uses a proprietary method of assessing the quality of the SME’s verified patent assets held in the EU, along with other important factors such as the commercialization and monetization potential of those assets and recent technology trends in global markets.

Read the full article here.

Alexander Weir is a Business Mentor for Prince's Trust in the UK. He has a BA Hons in Politics from the University of Hull and a Master of Laws from NYU in IP, Innovation and Information Technology.