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This multi-year expert meeting will seek to identify policies and best practices that encourage the creation and promote the international competitiveness of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs).
This will include the identification of existing national and international support measures and good practices for SME development and internationalization.
The multi-year expert meeting will also review the coordination and consistency of existing policy measures dealing with the promotion of entrepreneurship and private sector development, including the simplification of the regulatory and administrative environment.
The first year will deal with policy measures to promote entrepreneurship and enterprise formation. The meeting will review the main elements identified for implementing an entrepreneurship policy:
- Raising awareness of entrepreneurship as a career option.
- Developing mechanisms for generating and highlighting potential entrepreneurial opportunities.
- Supporting individuals who assume the risk of starting a firm or commercializing knowledge.
- Helping those struggling to grow their firms to gain access to necessary resources.
It will focus on the three main approaches that are relevant to encourage entrepreneurship in the start-up phase:
- Support to entrepreneurship infrastructure.
- The promotion of research-industry-government collaboration.
- Access to finance, a major hurdle in developing countries.
Another objective of the expert meeting will be to identify effective means to apply science, technology and innovation (STI) to development, and in particular to improve the levels of productivity and competitiveness of the enterprises of developing countries as a means to contribute to the fight against poverty.
In this first year of the expert meeting, the emphasis will be placed on STI capacity-building, including aspects such as STI policy and institutional development, STI regulatory framework and the encouragement of technology-based businesses, including through technology transfer.
Intended Outcome
The outcome of the meeting will be used to complete a checklist of best practices to advise developing countries on how to set up and sequence the implementation of a comprehensive entrepreneurship development policy and how to promote the design and implementation of STI policies that can contribute significantly to poverty reduction.
Inputs from experts Experts nominated by member States are encouraged to submit brief papers (approximately five pages) by 1 January 2009 to: Victor.konde@unctad.org, with copy to: angel.gonzalez-sanz@unctad.org. The papers should be submitted to the UNCTAD secretariat in advance of the meeting. The papers, which will draw on national and private sector experience, will be made available at the meeting in the form and language in which they are received. |
