Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 5.5, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, language: English, abstract: This thesis studies the involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in publicly funded research and development (R&D) projects. SMEs represent 99% of all companies in Europe and are important drivers of innovation, yet many lack the necessary resources to engage in formal research activities. Providing these firms with the possibility to make use of public funding programmes for R&D...