Investigate the possible ways to improve the company’s performance and competitiveness through the inter-organizational arrangements and productive cooperation networks as regional clusters, virtual organizations, cooperatives, supply chains, etc.

The main argument here is that the emergence of new types of industrial organization, specifically those relating to stimulate more inter-firm cooperation, offers new elements to public policies that can support the SME’s development plans. Policies which consider this dynamic aspect of cooperation among companies operating within the same production chain ( and not in an isolated form), that can create synergy of positive impacts, called “collective efficiency”, in order to improve an inter-firm network as a whole. Considering the high potential of the SME’s in terms of its contribution to social improvement ( job creation) and economic growth (increase of efficiency and productivity in the same productive chain), it is important to point out the necessity to offer support towards the modernization of SME’s