This book is concerned with one of the major contemporary issues of industrial organization: the role of small business enterprise in a mature market economy. Key issues covered are start-up and its financial features; static and dynamic scale economies; enterprise case histories; small business strategy; competitive forces; strategic pricing policy; determinants of growth and survivial; and the political economy of fair trade and enterprise. The treatment is analytical and empirical, well grounded in business reality, and set within the context of the political economy of small business. It is based on a unique and extensive database of small business enterprise, containing over 40,000 data points gathered by field work within the firm. The book starts with a section on the database and then applies diverse methods; statistical analysis; enterprise and case histories; econometrics; and political economy. In this way, a particularly rich picture of the modern small business emerges, because it is viewed from different perspectives. By the importation of contemporary ideas from industrial economics, allied to the use of statistical, econometric and qualitative techniques on a relational database, this book brings new standards of rigour and insight into the study of small business enterprise, without losing touch with either the reality of the small business or the milieu within which it functions. The author brings to this work his long-standing research experience in industrial economics, and an established publication record in small business economics.

This book is a 'crossover' treatment of quantitative and qualitative risk analysis within the setting of new high technology ventures in the UK. Reid and Smith have based their research on extensive fieldwork in patent-intensive, high-technology firms. This has included face-to-face interviews with leading investors, and is illustrated by two chapters of case studies. Their aim is to advance the understanding of methods of risk assessment and to illuminate current policy concerns about stimulating innovative output and securing intellectual property. This book is unique in being academic in intent and purpose, yet strongly grounded in practice, without becoming merely a practitioner volume. Reid and Smith find a considerable consensus in the venture capital industry on the spectrum of investments by risk, and on key commercial factors affecting risk. This book offers a useful and interdisciplinary approach to an increasingly popular field of study.