E-Business for SME Development

Abstract

In recent years, information communication technologies (ICT) have become accessible throughout the world, and appear to overcome both distance and time (Cairncross, 1997). ICT affects not only individual citizens, but also companies of all sizes and across all sectors. Of all the benefits of ICT use, the most important appears to be the improvement of competitive capacity by removing geographical and time barriers. SMEs that use ICT hope to increase their market share, achieve growth and overtake their competitors. But does better competitive capacity also have an impact on local and regional development (LRD)? And does LRD have an impact on the economy of a country and the limit of a nation? The ICT/regional development challenge is a sizeable one, since the two elements evolve at very different speeds-ICT evolves quickly, while regional development is achieved slowly.