Network and process of internalization of SMB

The SMB constitute the dominant part of the Italian economic context and, with the aim of maintaining their competitiveness on the market, they require processes of organizational adaptation that support the route of internationalization. The choices are referable to one kind of continuum delimited at the extremities by two specific forms: exports and direct investments to the foreign country. Between the two extreme solutions there are a series of intermediate forms of collaboration between companies that lead to the development of reticular forms or networks in which the technological investment has a strategic importance and is not only considered an instrument of the existing management. Such form of "virtual dimensional growth" allows the companies to maintain the flexibility that characterizes them and, at the same time, to pursue multiple target that allow them to enter with more force into foreign markets. The determining role of the ICT in supporting the international growth of companies with ability to supply the technologies apt to make possible interaction among all the participants of the supply chain becomes obvious. Moreover the complexity and the interoperability achieved by the business information systems evince the need to face the development of whole system while maintaining a separate management of the projects.