Policies to support internationalization

This paper presents practical suggestions and recommendations as to how public policy in Europe could make more of a contribution to the profitable exploitation of foreign market opportunities by Europe‘s SMEs. The paper will seek to combine practical policy relevance with theoretical soundness. As such, it will present a relevant and useful example of the relationship between scientifically robust research and public policy making. In this regard, the opportunity will be taken to identify a number of relevant issues in public policy making including some conclusions drawn with respect to the extent to which policy for internationalization is evidence based, as well as aspects of internationalization policy appears to have run ahead on the scientific evidence base.