SME´s in the developing east german areas have a backlog demand in design, positioning strategies and management knowledge about these issues. This is mainly a result of the former state-directed economy, which led to a lack of industrial products. So anything was needed - designed or not, high quality or not..
But today - almost 20 years after the reunion and the adaption of the western economic standards I find more and more interesting peculiarities.
Some SME´s still produce like in the 90s but are quite good connected to buyers and resellers - so they survived the good years and the bad years without becoming modern or high tech..
Industrial SME´s produce high quality products but mainly as component suppliers (90% in east germy). But ever closer markets force these SME´s to react - but how? The pay lots of money for marketing activities and lower their prices to a minimum on that nobody can live ..
Own product development and own brands are rare here. Only SME´s that were bought and controlled by large scale enterprises get the ressources (money, knowledge, research capacity,..) to develop themselves.
Did anybody found similar cases in other developing areas of europe or elsewhere?