A. Relevance and sustainability context
A.1 Policy relevance
How: Reflects the bioeconomy's structure and inclusivity, showing whether policies benefit businesses of all sizes.
Where: most relevant at the national and EU policy level.
Why: SME’s are more widely distributed and more involved in rural value chains and more likely to tried out innovative processes.
Question: Is the bioeconomy benefitting SMEs or is it concentrated among few large players?
A.2 Sustainability and / or comparative evaluation options
To put this indicator into perspective, data on the overall economic performance of the relevant sectors is needed to determine the impact of the bioeconomy’s contribution.
B. Data availability
B.1 Stage of development
The indicator is new as it has not previously been reported in an official publication. But data on SME’s are generally collected on a national and EU level though not specifically allocated to bioeconomy.
B.2 Data sources
Destatis and Eurostat.
B.3 Coverage over time and replicability
Destatis and Eurostat publish annual enterprise statistics on their websites, including the number of SMEs along with parameters such as revenue, total enterprise numbers and employment figures.
B.4 Coverage across scales and sectors; compatibility
The data is available at national (Germany) and EU levels. A sectoral breakdown using NACE codes is technically feasible. However, sectoral data do not cover all sectors. In a next step the sectors have to be linked to bioeconomy.
C. Considerations for operationalization
C.1 Feasibility: Fit for monitoring
Feasibility is sufficient (possibly fit, but with foreseeable challenges). SME data are publicly available at the national level for Germany and at the EU level. Data is available at a sectorial level (NACE Codes) for most economic sectors. In the next step, this data must be linked to the bioeconomy using NACE codes at the sectoral level.
C.2 Institutions
Current Institutions: Destatis, Eurostat
Potential Institutions: A combination of Destatis/Eurostat (for data) and research institutes (for calculations).
C.3 Future prospects
Given a sectoral breakdown is currently available the indicator can already be used to produce preliminary results. A key need for methodologically sound and reliable results is that an institution is commissioned to work on the alignment of the SME’s sectors with bioeconomy.
C.4 Costs, considerations and reproducibility
It is difficult to estimate the costs at this stage, but as the majority of the data is already being collected, the main task is to link the SME sectors to the bioeconomy. This should not involve a particularly large amount of work. Once the sector classifications have been established, periodic updates should also be relatively inexpensive.
C.5 Potential for automation
Automation could be feasible since the data are publicly available and can be downloaded via code. For this it needs to be provided that the curation and continuous updating of data linking SMEs to the bioeconomy can be reliably assured.
C.6 Presentation options and breakdown / sub-indicator needs
In its simplest form, the indicator should initially show the percentage change of SME’s over time. A more detailed overview should then be broken down by sector. This should be accompanied by a comparison with SMEs not involved in the bioeconomy as well as the total economic performance.
C.7 Potential for scenario integration
This indicator has moderate but limited relevance for foresight activities. It could theoretically inform scenarios exploring inclusive versus concentrated bioeconomy growth or policies favoring small actors over large industry. In practice, this indicator is more useful for ongoing policy monitoring than for scenario building.
C.8 Interlinkages and alignment with other monitoring activities
The indicator is not being reported in any monitoring systems yet. It would feed into Germany's National Bioeconomy Strategy monitoring and the Sustainability Strategy. Further is supports SDG (e.g., SDG 8)