Firms that scale up are central drivers of employment and income growth across OECD economies and have been the subject of significant policy focus in recent decades. However, despite this, a full understanding of the factors of success and indeed the role of policy remains somewhat elusive, in large part reflecting limited or mixed evidence. In some countries the approach is to identify, and provide support to potential winners, (typically in a given, e.g. hi-tech, activity) whilst in others, the focus is on ensuring the right universal framework conditions.

Firms that scale up have long raised policy attention for their strong potential in terms of job creation, innovation, competitiveness, and economic performance. However, and despite an abundant academic literature, the conditions of SME growth or scale up remain overall poorly understood.

This chapter introduces the concept of scale up policy. It first aims to disentangle the notion of SME scale up and high growth, and to identify the drivers of SME scaling up based on relevant literature. Building on lessons learned from the microdata work of the project about the profiles and pathways of scalers, it then discusses policy implications, presents rationale for policy intervention in support of scale-ups, and proposes an analytical framework for better understanding country approaches and policy mixes to unleashing SME potential to scale up. This analytical framework supports a series of thematic reports on scale up policies.

SMEs face a number of barriers in accessing finance, which hamper their scale up and growth potential. While public support for scale up has long focused on start-ups and highly innovative firms at the technology frontier for their exceptional potential, recent evidence has shown the existence of a long tail of scalers in different segments of the SME population, with different profiles and trajectories that may slip through the cracks. This chapter aims to understand how governments can unleash finance for innovation, investment and network expansion as drivers of SME scale up. Based on an analysis of 709 policies and 210 institutions across OECD countries, it provides an overview of the policy mixes that governments have put in place to improve SME access to scale up finance, as well as of the institutional and governance arrangements to support these policies.

Data have become a key asset for increasing productivity and innovation capacity, and enabling SMEs to scale up. Yet SMEs are less aware of the potential and need for them to implement better data governance. This chapter aims to understand how governments create the incentives and conditions for improving SME data governance. It first presents the rationale and scope for policy intervention, and proposes an analytical framework for mapping relevant national policies and institutions in this area. Based on cross-country analysis of 487 policies and 209 institutions across the OECD, the report provides an overview of the policy mixes governments have put in place to enhance SME access to, protection and exploitation of data, as well as on the institutional and governance arrangements behind.