In the 21st century, SMEs as single actors cannot play a leading role in the global market with respect to the level of ideas, knowledge and know-how. They become successful only if they are searching for achieving their innovation goals in a network.

From a macroeconomic point of view, global networks are spanning across countries to connect institutions, universities, governmental actors and different businesses to solve a problem by providing resources for innovative developments.

The key to building a successful network is the selection of suitable partners and the quality of the relationship between them.

SMEs take part in networks mainly at a regional level. Although, globalization is a strong driving force for the evolvement of different networks, open innovation networks have just started to develop significantly nowadays. The independent businesses of networks are harmonizing their business interests in order to gain benefits in the competition by their innovative developments. While at the time of the millennium, the focus of competitiveness was on the level of an enterprise, after a few years, it moved onto the region or community.

Most networks emerge around a geographical area or a sector.

Major benefits of networks:

• Strengthening the innovation potential of a given geographical area
• Application/goal oriented R&D
• Decreasing R&D costs
• Speedy application of new technologies
• Decreasing risks