Paper presented at the RENT XXV conference. The point of this paper is to improve our understanding on the added value of M&A advisors in SMEs, an important segment of the economy and merger industry. To predict the added value of professional advice we contrast two theories: the agency theory and the …

Within the next decade, the number of professional- and family carers will be insufficient to deal with the increasing demand for care. The shortage on the labor market for health care professionals becomes evident by the time the demand for care exceeds the supply1. In order to find solutions to make …

The Co-Design Pressure Cooker was set up to gather knowledge on co-design in product development activities of Small-to-Medium Enterprises(SMEs). This booklet gives an impression of ten projects conducted in the Province of Utrecht, the Netherlands. In these ten projects, a total of 22 companies were …

It’s clear that the e$ective management of design is a commercial necessity. It enables a company or organization to innovate, to stay in line with or ahead of the market, and to identify and cater to consumer needs. When design becomes an explicit part of the management process, it can have a greater …

This final project explored the functions and services of the export consultancy firm Zet-Group and focuses on OOO Zet-Group, the Russian division. Furthermore, it lists the obstacles that Dutch SMEs experience when exporting to Russia so that Zet-Group can develop its services to make them fit with …

Creative SMEs are heavily focusing on the creating process designing new products and services. Consequently, their managers tend to loose contact with crucial management issues. Especially their knowledge of the financial aspects of their business can be so limited that they fail to connect with the …

Different types of strategic renewal by the successor are identified: organizational change, innovation, combined actions and no action. The main assumption is that renewal after succession improves SME post-transfer performance compared to no actions taken. Also successor’s timing of the takeover is …

It is often said that European companies must stop trying to compete on price and concentrate more on developing products and services that offer customers and users a high level of added value. Design is an indispensable tool for such development and innovation, and this is why the findings of this …

Vast empirical evidence underscores that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. As governments accordingly pursue export-promoting policies we are interested in the firmness of these conclusions with respect to African small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and the influence of the …

Investigation of the costs of investing in a new transformer compared to the maintenance of an existing one. A detailed research on the different technical possibilities to maintain transformers has been conducted. Transformer failures and the following cost issues are shown. Further the Superconducting …