Creating knowledge in an entrepreneurial environment for SMEs: learning from an American experience

At the policy level, the UK government has developed a number of policies over the years to support competitiveness. These policies are reflected in the objectives and priorities at regional level and they map reasonably with the knowledge economy strategy. In Scotland, a large part of the focus has been to grow and develop new SMEs. However, this is not necessarily simple to implement and evidence has emerged to show the problems associated with the strategy. A delegation to Minnesota was led by the Scottish Executive and Scottish Enterprise. The overall purpose was to examine and compare economic development models currently being applied in Minnesota and Scotland. An area of importance was the understanding of the developments in the knowledge economy, particularly from the role of the State University, where many millions of dollars are planned for the development of knowledge-based research and output. This paper outlines the findings from the study and compares the State of Minnesota with Scotland.