Using strategic information for small firms as a means of redressing the disadvantages of peripherality

With over 2,000 participating firms, CAM‐Benchmarking Ltd ( http://www.cam‐benchmarking.com ) is one of the world's largest strategy benchmarking databases for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper draws upon CAM data to show that in a geographical region suffering from the deleterious economic effects of peripherality real progress to convergence (in terms of firm performance) can be achieved through benchmarking. More specifically the paper shows that comprehensive benchmarking data can be used to close the information gap that small firms, relative to large firms, often have, and through this process boost individual firm, and hence overall regional, performance.