Innovation in Chinese and German small and medium-sized companies

Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,0, University of Potsdam, language: English, abstract: With the rapid economic development in the past two decades, China has become the world second largest economy and has a profound influence on global economic development. In order to have a better understanding of the Chinese “economic miracle” and a future-oriented insight into Chinese economic growth, it is necessary for us to have a glance at the development of Chinese small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and the driving force of their development: Innovation. Many scholars in China and Germany have carried out research on SME innovation. However, because of the differences in culture, economic environment, and SME development history etc., the development of SME innovation is also different, leading to dissimilar research directions. In this thesis, the author analyzes the articles, reports, surveys, books and other literature that was made in China in the past 20 years. All the literature and data are synthesized into three parts: the characteristics of China's SME innovation, the challenge of China's SME innovation and the opportunities of China's SME innovation. Based on literature analysis, the author summarizes the characteristics, challenges and opportunities into different points. This thesis also presents the most representative German research on SME innovation as a comparison to Chinese ones, and describes the similarities and differences between Chinese and German SMEs' innovation research, helping to find out the new direction of future research on SME innovation in China.