In their working paper, recently published in ifh Göttingen's "ifh Forschungsberichte" series, Christoph Friedrich and Rolf Sternberg describe the more than 300 innovation support instruments that specifically target SMEs in selected structurally weak regions and then discuss and evaluate their fields of action.
In Germany, there is a wide range of innovation support programs and instruments that address companies in German regions and are documented in the support database of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). SMEs, which account for a large share of companies in structurally weak regions, are an important target group of these funding measures. This research report has collected funding instruments from the BMWK funding database that favor SMEs either exclusively or to a particular extent in terms of funding. These selected support instruments are first described quantitatively based on their spatial and non-spatial attributes. Among other things, the funding instruments have been differentiated on the basis of their R&D intensity. This is because a large proportion of SMEs innovate primarily as a result of everyday learning through the Doing-Using-Interacting (DUI) innovation mode, without conducting R&D. Second, political fields of action of these funding instruments, which specifically address different types of structurally weak regions, are discussed and evaluated.
The research report was written as part of the ongoing research project "DUI.REG - Measuring the Doing-Using-Interacting Mode of SMEs in Structurally Weak Regions", which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research 2022-2025 and led by research teams at the Universities of Göttingen (Prof. Bizer and Dr. Thomä), Hannover (Prof. Sternberg) and Jena (Prof. Cantner).
