Skype, Spotify creators hope to inspire European innovation

Ms Truong's point is important. Failure should not stigmatise, but across Europe, bankruptcy laws punish.

And while entrepreneurial spirit may be a teachable subject, actually being entrepreneurial is a hard grind, made more difficult by significant barriers in the EU member states. How many graduates of these entrepreneurship courses/degrees actually start companies?

Compared to the US, which apparently is the comparator for this Commissioner:

1. small business startups are saddled with the full burden of social and other taxes even before they have turned a profit (which can take years) and even then small companies often stay small to avoid the thresholds that trigger higher levels of taxation. The whole point is to turn small companies into big companies.
2. new businesses need considerable flexibility in employment practices to grow and shrink as they evolve; many member states employment laws interfere with startups doing this
3. IP is important and this is much more than an EU version of Bayh-Dole. Indeed, academic entrepreneurialism is almost absent given the lack of flexibility in employment, making it very risk to researchers to start companies in some member states.

What could the EU do? Identify EU member states which are engines of innovation and why and which ones have poor track records. Publish comparative performance data on small company taxation by member state, labour market employment flexibility, access to starting capital, social costs, etc. Demonstrate that the biggest barrier to entrepreneurialism is government overhang but I wonder whether the Commission itself has an appetite for this.

The challenge for governments is knowing when they are being helpful and what they should do, and knowing when they are in the way and need to step aside.

There is good research demonstrating why Silicon Valley is successful, while many of the EU member state's attempts have turned into expensive public works projects with little impact. Do people not learn?

Perhaps the EU/US trade talks will shed light on how to use regional variations to drive regional competitiveness to drive entrepreneurial zeal. The single market was not intended to be the "uniform market".

Absolutely right, Justin. While structural issues can be dealt with, if there is political will power, your point about creating the right culture (of both success and failure) is important.

It could be argued that in some member states, government stands in the way of success because entrepreneurialism has been nationalised.

Your point about big companies is also apt. We see an abundance of state owned enterprises, which have dreadful performance track records, or a few big companies that lock employees in through subsidised benefits and in effect are acting like state-owned companies to get the tax breaks for the subsidies.

The political fear of the downside of failure trumps the longer term benefits of that come from entrepreneurialism.