SMEWG RESOURCES

Thailand informed about the APEC Promoting Innovation Seminar scheduled on September 17th and 18th in Bangkok. Its objectives included crafting policy ideas and recommendations on how SME agencies could assist SMEs going through the IP process.

APEC e-commerce forum was held from November 26 to 28, 2015 in Jeju city, Korea. The purpose of the event was to provide a place to discuss the e-commerce industry for industry experts and policy makers. This forum contributed to increasing people’s understanding about the e-commerce industry, and sharing the most up-to-date information on the e-commerce industry.

The 3rd SME Business Ethics Forum was held in Lima, Peru on September 5-6 for three sectors: medical devices, biopharmaceutical, and construction-engineering.

Korean government’s presentation on SME support programs which contributed to the success of a female entrepreneur in the Chinese market. Her company faced with many difficulties when established and she decided to enter overseas markets in 2013. However, problems arose in that course, including lack of information, language barrier, and high cost of marketing. Then, in 2015, the company participated in a government assistance program named ‘Global Distribution Network Program’ that was jointly run by SMBA, Small and Medium Business Administration, and SBC, Small and medium Business Corporation. Thanks to that, the company was offered with opportunities to sell its products on a highest-rated home shopping network in China.

Peru introduced five steps to achieve the objective of increasing productivity and reducing productive heterogeneity among firms: (i) Promote access to government procurement through the National initiative to enhance micro and small firms during the international crisis; (ii) Promote Innovation; (iii) Promote internalization, in which e‐Commerce is a facilitating tool; (iv) Promote value added to access to government procurement markets; and (v) Look for sustainability and growth through to maintain a regular/minimum amount of public procurement to enhance the SMEs improve their productivity and look for other markets.

This project provided a mentorship-driven platform for start-ups to connect with the trusted partners and smart money in APEC. There were over 90 start-ups selected as finalists of APEC Challenge and secured totally over 50 million USD early-stage investments since 2013. The conclusion was that the next steps to further facilitate SME’s growth and access to regional and global market are: (i) to optimize the conducive innovation environment; (ii) to enhance digital competitiveness; and (iii) to capitalize on O2O opportunities for innovative start-ups and SMEs through PPP.

The project is identified as one of the existing efforts undertaken by APEC in promoting digital economy. Five O2O serial events held in Malaysia, Chinese Taipei, Viet Nam and the Philippines in 2017, expected to establish an expert network, formulate the APEC SME digital resilience training guidebook, enhance SMEs’ capabilities to seize digital opportunities and well prepare for the challenges via cross fora collaboration.

This project aims to provide a cross-border platform to modernize and facilitate SME’s participation in global value chains. Strong public-private partnership is the key making this project successful. Under this project, 5 serial O2O events has been held in Chinese Taipei, Viet Nam and Peru with the focus on the 4 main O2O innovation areas, namely, “Mobile Commerce”, “Sharing Economy”, “Collaborative Industry” and “NexGen Innovation”. An “APEC Guidebook on SME O2O” was published in November 2016.

Recommendations from the Dialogue include: Government agencies to act as facilitator; Look into new emerging SMEs, such as online business, social enterprises, services industry and tourism;Develop strategies to promote innovation and technology transfer to improve the competitiveness of SMEs; Best practices on innovation and entrepreneurship; he Internet is an important infrastructure to help SMEs do business and export. On this point, it is shared that APEC may develop a work plan to enabling the participation of SMEs in digital trade; Assess the impacts of FTAs/RTAs on agriculture.

The 4th APEC Business Ethics for SMEs Forum to be held in Hanoi, Viet Nam on 7-8 September 2017. The goals of the forum include: (i) specialized capacity building mentoring to ensure all economies have relevant industry codes in place by 2020, (ii) increase the number of member economies with public-private framework agreements to facilitate high-standard ethical business practices across national health systems, and (iii) strengthen ethical business practices for distributors and other third party intermediaries as vital enterprises in the medical device and biopharmaceutical sectors.

The APEC SME Internationalization Model Indices was developed per individual economy as well as APEC as the whole thanks to the data collected through pilot studies from 5 member economies. As for analysis, the SME internationalization was examined in terms of the economy-industry-firm size aspect, the diversity-intensity relationship and the major determinants. Major research results included: 1) The larger the firm size, the higher the internationalization level of SMEs; 2) The diversity of SME internationalization is generally higher than the Intensity across all economies; and 3) Firm size, R&D, export history, openness and industry characteristics matter for SME internationalization, but readiness to market advance and government support have little or significant impact on internationalization. In order to share the results of the project and to discuss ways to globalize SMEs in the APEC region, Korea’s Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA) and Small and medium Business Corporation(SBC) hold a workshop in Seoul, Korea in October 2016 (SME 05 2016S)

Workshop held in Ha Noi, Viet Nam on 26 – 27 May 2016. Structured in 5 sessions: (i) Overview of SMEs’ participation in the Regional Food Supply Chains; (ii) Impediments to SMEs’ participation in the regional food supply chain; (iii) Critical issues and support for SMEs’ participation in the Food Supply Chain; (iv) Experiences in promoting SMEs’ efficient participation in the Regional Food Supply Chain; and (v) Case Studies of SMEs’ participation in the food supply chain