Small businesses in Ireland need to invest more in research and development if they want to survive, an Irish academic has warned.
Speaking at a symposium of European SMEs, Eamonn Murphy, Professor of Quality and Applied Statistics at the Enterprise Research Centre at the University of Limerick, said that small businesses need to innovate or risk going out of business.
"Innovation and R&D are central to the operation and competitive success of every Irish SME", Prof Murphy said.
"The length of time and resources that indigenous companies invest in R&D dictates whether they remain competitive and gain new markets. Therefore, it is imperative that the indigenous business sector is supported and encouraged to participate in such activity, which is pivotal to the survival and success of the sector."
He said that although the Government and the EU had already made moves to improve the working environment for SMEs in a bid to encourage them to innovate, it was ultimately down to the individual companies.
"Irish SMEs have traditionally always had significant innovation and R&D challenges, as they possessed limited resources to invest in new and improved products, skills and technologies," he said. "However, in 2007, there are increased resources available to small businesses that wish to develop into medium sized enterprises including various courses and programmes that the third level educational sector is now providing.
