Strengthening the international competitiveness of SMEs by strengthening the bilateral system of regional enterprise initiatives

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The REGIONET initiative has set up a model of regional and cross-border cooperation between SMEs in the border region Austria-Hungary. As a result of this networking based structuring of the regions, the cross-sector and cross-border business relations of the border region have been able to budge from their stagnant state. Simultaneously, despite the cross-border efforts, the created networks are in the majority of cases only active within their own core regions. The cooperation between entrepreneurial networks is only limited to solving individual economic issues, they are not strategically dispositioned, and as an effect, the opportunities lying in strategic cross-border cooperations are not being utilized. The impulses of open and motivated entrepreneurial networks tremendously strengthen the international competitiveness of enterprises. To make better use of the opportunities provided by cross-border cooperations aimed at strategic economic development, the networks are being reshaped with the involvement of economic development organizations to regional entrepreneurial initiatives, that form four bilateral economic development groups in the immediate border region thereafter. As a result, the entrepreneurial networks will be able to venture outside of their own (regional-national) economic zones and will be able to cooperate more effectively, hence they can step in a catalisator role to spur the market growth of SMEs’ of the border region. The strategic cooperation of bilateral economic groups for development, the establishment of cooperations yielding sectoral, innovation stimulating opportunities and the activities aimed at improving entrepreneurial competencies and establishing international business relations strengthen the international competitiveness of the border region’s SMEs.

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