PIN-SME

Andrea Benassi

ICT small businesses are the key to fostering innovation and growth and to disseminating and promoting the use of ICT. Europe’s 23 million European SMEs need ICT to enhance their competitiveness and be more prosperous.

Half of the productivity growth of the EU comes from the ICT sector. In 2006, SMEs represented a share of more than two thirds of the workforce of the European ICT services industry. Micro-enterprises alone account for more than 94% of the total number of enterprises.

The EU is not suffering from a shortage of entrepreneurship in ICT; but it is suffering from a shortage of ICT SMEs that are empowered to grow and innovate at international competitive levels. International markets are essentially dominated by large corporations, while ICT SMEs struggle to create their own networks and innovation models.

Despite domination by horizontal “big players” that provide products, services and innovation, the ICT sector thrives on small ICT players that make these products available to end users and adapt them according to the specific needs of the single customer. They innovate on top of existing products and are pioneers of new markets within and beyond multinationals’ value chains.

The ICT industry is well settled in the Brussels political scene. There is no doubt that multinational enterprises have understood very early the importance of being represented before the European policy makers. Both large ICT players and their associations have a very loud voice in the Brussels arena, to the point that they sometimes pretend to speak on behalf of SMEs.

PIN-SME is bringing an end to this state of affairs. European SMEs need leverage; they must speak with one voice on the development of European ICT policies – and this voice is becoming stronger and clearer, with the help of PIN-SME.

PIN-SME is the first European association exclusively focused on representing the interests of the SME community in the ICT sector, bringing ICT SMEs on the business and political scene, where so far large companies have dominated. The mission of PIN-SME is rooted in the past battles fought by UEAPME on software patents to prevent monopolisation in the software sector, damages to interoperability and barriers to innovative SMEs.   

UEAPME fully supports PIN-SME. Together with this new partner, UEAPME is ready to undertake new battles and will strive to advocate the interests of SMEs in ICT.

Andrea Benassi, UEAPME Secretary General