The Istanbul Conference was the second OECD Ministerial Conference on SMEs and Globalization that took place on June 4-5, 2004 in order to take forward the Bologna Process. The event was jointly organized by the OECD through the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry (DSTI) and the Turkish Ministry of Industry and Trade through KOSGEB.

Dr. Serge Golovanov, General Manager of GOLEM IMS GMBH and UNIDO International consultant and Member of Austrian Delegation for the Conference was invited as speaker to contribute to Business Symposium "SMEs Competing in a Knowledge Economy". The presentation “Recognition of Knowledge Capital in Knowledge Economy: The price of ignorance” was focused on issues of business losses occurring due to inadequate know-how, managerial skills, various common inefficiencies taking place in absence of IT tools for performance management in many enterprises in different countries.

Based on latest evaluations made during training programs in Pharos Business Navigator implemented in UK and Colombia he estimated such losses in magnitude of 10%-25% of annual company gross profits depending of company size, life history and education of management. Most of SME entrepreneurs are not aware of the loses and relevant actual figures as well potential improvements until effective and easy to use IT tools for performance management are put into internal routine practices.