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Subject:Re: What is a SME From:Kent Newton <KentN -at- METRIX-INC -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 15 Feb 1996 17:10:00 PST
Chris Hulin asked:
>What's an SME? Is it "ess-em-ee" or "Smee".
To which sseifert -at- fairfield -dot- com (and others) replied:
>SMEs are Subject Matter Experts. I pronounce it Smee (isn't that the
pirate
>in Peter Pan?) I'm sure you have SMEs where you work, they lurk
everywhere.
>If someone speaks or writes in passive voice, s/he's probably a SME.
While Peter Ring replied:
>SME is an abbreviation for Small and Medium sized Enterprise. The
>term is primarily used by the EEC for their R&D programmes
>(BRITE/EURAM, etc.), but has from there found a quite widespread use
>in European bureaucratic language. For most EEC R&D programmes,
>the definition of a SME is:
>- Less than 500 employees.
>- Turnover of less than 38 million ECU (approx. 50 M$)
>- Not majority owned by a larger industrial group.
To which I say:
Oh great, now we have two definitions for SME! How will we know what
we're talking about? Do we have a consensus on which of these two
definitions are prevalent? Do we have another definition lurking out
there somewhere?
Kent Newton
Senior Technical Writer
Metrix, Inc.
kentn -at- metrix-inc -dot- com