COMPETE

COMPETE is a research project partly funded by the European Social Fund which aims to identify specific factors that improve the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the North West, and will develop a benchmarking online tool to enhance the capabilities of managers.

“We want the COMPETE project to show the way forward for SMEs,” explains MMUBS Research Associate, Dr Effie Kesidou, “especially regarding factors for improving the competitiveness of SMEs. The web tool will help managers to be more innovative, increase productivity, and be more export intensive, especially in the European marketplace.”

Dr Kesidou continues: “For SMEs, skills, investments, entrepreneurship and innovation are the drivers of growth. To help us achieve an overall picture of the business’ needs, we have developed a questionnaire to gather information.”

Questionnaire

The project will take the form of a detailed questionnaire, downloadable from this site (see link below). This has different groups of questions, including looking at the capabilities of managers and employees, the internal mechanism of learning, networking and more formal collaborations, and questions on output and productivity.

Most questions require a simple YES or NO answer, some ask you to choose a scale of 1 to 5, and some ask for a figure.

Benefits

As a manager of a SME, the COMPETE project can help in many ways. As well as showing how you can become more competitive, increase your exports, and be more innovative in your approach, it will also provide a feedback report, which will contribute to the improvement of your competitive strategies.

“We are taking a holistic approach to this project,” says Dr Kesidou. “We want to use performance indicators and compare them with national and international indicators. The web tool itself can only serve to help businesses grow and develop, and the feedback and advice gained will be invaluable as a way forward.”

Criteria

Small and Medium Enterprises located in the North West region of the UK are invited to participate to this research project.

If you are interested in completing the questionnaire, you can download it here www.competeforsmallfirms.org.uk

Contact:

If you would like more information about COMPETE, contact Dr Effie Kesidou on 0161 247 6046 or email e.kesidou@mmu.ac.uk