Politiche per lo sviluppo dell'imprenditorialità e politiche a sostegno delle PMI: quali contraddizioni?

In the attempt to encourage the economic expansion of backward areas, the last twenty years has witnessed the increasingly widespread use of instruments designed to promote the creation and diffusion of entrepreneurship policies. However, these measures do not always succeed in ensuring the expected results. This paper discusses the hypothesis that the effectiveness of entrepreneurship policies is often diminished by the lack of a clear distinction between these policies and general SME policies. From this perspective, and with particular reference to the situation in Southern Italy, it is argued that it is inappropriate to devote excessive attention to business start-up at the expense of providing sufficient consolidation to the existing entrepreneurial framework.