Les acteurs du financement des PME innovantes en Belgique : le secteur de la biotechnologie

Abstract

The access to bank credit for new companies and SMEs is difficult. Indeed, their lack of collateral does not allow them to fill the conditions requested by the banks to obtain a loan. Therefore, these companies must turn themselves towards other sources and actors to finance their creation and development. However, these actors are very diverse, have different expectations and have their own ways to intervene. Therefore, these entrepreneurs encounter difficulties to choose the funding source most suited to their needs. The aim of this thesis is to study these different actors in order to understand which ones are the most appropriate to use according to the situation faced by the company and its stage of development. Moreover, we will focus on the biotechnology sector for two reasons. First, we want to conduct a relevant study on a specific group of companies only. Second, this industry plays a non-negligible role in the Belgian economy. First, we reviewed the literature on this subject and have defined the concepts of innovation and innovative company. We also took some time to describe what is biotechnology and the importance of this sector in the world, Europe and Belgium. Finally, we came up with a list of fifteen actors active in the financing of the innovative companies that we found in this literature. Two kinds of interviews were conducted in order to understand how these actors intervene in Belgian innovative SMEs active in the biotechnology field. On the one hand, fourteen of these companies explained us whether each actor contributed to their funding process, for which reasons and what these actors actually brought to the company. On the other hand, sixteen organizations which play a role in the financing of innovative companies explained what they think or have experienced with the actors we have listed. Thanks to this research and answers, we were able to establish a recommended planning regarding the intervention of these actors. Indeed, we selected the ones that we believe are best suited to the type of companies we focused on, and the moment at which they should intervene. Lastly, we also pointed out some variations of this recommended planning relative to several characteristics of the companies we have interviewed, such as the type of biotechnology they are active in or the type of innovative company they are.