Indeed, this means "cutting [the] red tape involved in starting a company, improving social benefits for the self-employed, fostering networks and support services for new entrepreneurs, and providing tax breaks to start or invest in new companies," the SBIB paper argues.
However, the authors are keen to stress that it is not just new companies that create jobs, it is "fast-growing new companies". The EU should focus more on these companies as they are "the most powerful source of new jobs in an economy," they assert.
Action is required because there are "not enough SMEs fulfilling their growth potential and creating new jobs," the paper states. Indeed, only "five per cent of European companies created from scratch since 1980 are in the top 1000 in terms of market capitalisation," it notes.
EU innovation policy should also "start paying more attention to helping small companies grow in size" too, the authors argue.
This does not mean "an end to all the useful policy advances that have helped boost the rate of company-creation in Europe," the paper argues. Rather, it maintains that "it means taking policy analysis a step further, to foster growth as well as creation".
Therefore, SBIB recommends various measures including "tax breaks, awards programmes and information clearinghouses".
But the "overarching issue is cultural" because Europeans tend to "shun risk," the authors say. Europeans thus need to considerably change their perception of risk as "high-growth entrepreneurship is about as risky as business can get," the authors claim.
"Teaching the values of innovation and entrepreneurship in schools" and "celebrating entrepreneurs in prizes and the media" would also help to alter Europe's risk-averse culture, the paper argues.
The authors also encourage researchers to organise themselves "across scientific disciplines" and acquire training for "global growth and flexibility" to boost fast-growth companies. "Targeting tax incentives and other financing aids to growth companies" would be equally useful, the authors claim.
"Public debate" on entrepreneurship and a "change in climate that creates new jobs in old economies" is needed, the SBIB paper concludes.
