SMEs have the power – UK Patents
Jinfo Blog

21st January 2010

By Joanna Ptolomey

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Just how important is the SME market in business and economic development? Quite significant and not to be underestimated considered Anne Jordan in her recent livewire post - http://digbig.com/5bayje. SMEs are ‘looking and acting the business' as they perform their way and the economy out of the recession it seems. Recently a particular SME industry sector, the UK patent activity sector, was singled as being significant by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in their December 2009 publication Economic and Labour Market Review. Analysis of data shows that small businesses (those with fewer than 50 employees) accounted for 40% of live patents. Medium sized business for 16%, and large organisations (those with employees over 250) 44%. That gives SMEs a 56% share of the market. The ONS data is also broken down by unitary authorities and counties (NUTS2 regions). More specific geographic locations for patent innovation are also identified, such as Cardiff, London, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. This data was published by the ONS from a data matching exercise released on 15th December 2009 edition in the Economic and Labour Market Review (ELMR) - http://digbig.com/5bayjf. The data is the result from some preliminary exercises to match ONS business surveys with data patent records held by the Intellectual Property Office. Take note information vendors and libraries. Small organisations working in patents are at the cutting edge of innovation, research and technology - they are always in the market for high quality information content. And what about the role of libraries? Many large city public libraries already offer business information services and consider SMEs to be customers. But as Anne also pointed out, are libraries making the best out of their local connections to deliver high quality tailored services? This is especially true for the technology driven innovative market of patents? This is a business opportunity for libraries to join forces and perhaps even cooperatively share resources in order to support business growth – public, academic, NHS clinical? Yes I know the business models for delivering shared services can be difficult for libraries, but it can be done and the vendors have a role to play also. The rewards could be worth it. SMEs, like all organisations, can find it hard to Fumsi (find, use, store and share information. Libraries and information vendors know quite a lot about this……so what are we all waiting for? Get out there and grab some of that SME business.

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