Small companies more innovative than large companies?

There's certainly a lot to be said for the personal service and customer care offered by a smaller company.

Unfortunately, in this current climate, to avoid having all your business swallowed up by the "big boys", it is essential to find a niche in your market.

Hi,
I think, being innovative in ideas is not a property owned by small scale companies.
If you want to grow your business, you have to be innovative and your services should satisfy the clients.

I think one of the benefits of small companies from the customers' point of view is the consistency of work and the relationship value they get from dealing with a known individual. Clients seem to like the fact you remember them from your past dealings with them, sometimes even being able to recognise them by voice.

Quite right!

I worked on the same - ish principles when I was in retail. I got to know my customers in such a way that when they came to my counter, I practically had everything they needed ready, (cigarettes, lotto tickets etc..) It's definitely the small things. If you can treat a client as if they are an old, respected friend it can definitely boost your company reputation and make it unique in its niche. Many times, the popularity of your business is built on how you work with your clients, and in my case, friendlier is always better.

Hi,
In my point of view small companies are more innovative than large companies.Sometimes it is difficult to maintain the productivity and the customer relationship in large companies. But small companies do the task

I was reading a Google report about the US market - sorry I can't find the link or I would post it. And in their definition a small company is one with less than 500 employees - a medium one with up to 25,000 and a large above that.

Can you believe - how many UK companies even have 500?

I worked on various government-funded projects to do with improving training support for business and carried out a fair amount of self-initiated "market research" to guide how I approached them.

From memory, the statistics then said about 80% British companies employ 1 - 10 people (including the boss). When I did my "random sample" of regional businesses to visit, these stats held true for the area in which I worked. I don't think the percentages will have changed that much in the intervening period.

As you know, I'm mainly interested in career guidance, career development and workplace problem-solving (when the problems relate to the human-organisation interface). Some recent research that interested me said most small companies don't take on additional employees (ie government shouldn't throw money at the whole small business sector if its aim is to provide new jobs).

The small businesses that do grow and take on new staff are usually those which set up and use good management systems to measure all the key aspects of their business (profitability, sales growth, etc). There's a lesson for all of us here - if we want to be successful, we'd best adopt a professional approach to the way we manage our businesses!

According to Wikipedia, in the European Union, a small business generally has under 50 employees and a medium sized business has under 250 employees.

25000 employees and still medium sized? If that's true, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Ebay, BBC are all medium sized businesses.

Now I feel so proud calling mine a small business.