How can we turn Europe into a leading global scale-up ecosystem?

European scale-up experts meet in Brussels

Veroniek Collewaert

By Veroniek Collewaert

Professor of Entrepreneurship

07 December 2022

As champions of innovation and job creation, scale-ups – or high-growth firms – play a pivotal role in our economy. Unfortunately, only a fraction of start-ups manage to scale up, especially in a European context. According to Prof Dr Rudy Aernoudt (Ghent University and European Commission), Europe hosts over 35% of the world’s start-ups, yet only 10% of the scale-ups are based here. If we want to realise growth opportunities across the continent – and ultimately make Europe the world-leading scale-up ecosystem – it’s of vital importance to share knowledge and expertise across borders, from both academia and practitioners.

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On 7 November, Vlerick Business School hosted the European Scale-Up Workshop, a joint initiative by Vlerick, Nordic Innovation, and the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (Erasmus University Rotterdam). Over 50 top scale-up experts, policymakers and practitioners gathered at our Brussels campus to share research and learnings on Europe’s fast-growing companies.

Veroniek Collewaert, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Vlerick and Director of the Centre for Excellence in Scale-ups:

If we want to turn Europe into a thriving ecosystem for scale-ups, we are not going to get there by everyone working on this in isolation. At Vlerick, we’ve been actively working on scale-ups and their key growth challenges since 2014. But many other players across Europe have been doing the same. This includes other academic players – like the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship – as well as organisations like Nordic Innovation which want to stimulate scale-ups in all Nordic countries. So we saw this workshop as an excellent opportunity to stimulate cross-border and cross-partner collaboration, sharing best practices on programmes for, and research about, scale-ups. We firmly believe that there is more to be gained from all of us working together more closely, with the ultimate hope that we can create a flywheel for the European scale-up ecosystem.

Need for more integrated research agenda

In the first session, leading academics discussed what we need to know in the field of scale-ups and high-growth firms. Is there such a thing as the DNA of a scale-up? And what are typical success factors for high growth? Prof Dr Justin Jansen (Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship and Rotterdam School of Management) highlighted the importance of working towards an integrated research agenda.

Scaling up is not a challenge for individual countries or regions. Effective policy and programmes start with knowledge and insights about the dynamics and differences within and between countries and regions to better understand how to support high-growth firms at the European level.”

The panel debate that followed his talk was moderated by Professor Veroniek Collewaert, who concluded that more attention needs to be focused on the diverse needs scale-ups may have – moving beyond funding to include access to talent, markets, and overall business models that support scalability.

This conclusion is confirmed by the most recent results of our Rising Star Monitor, an annual study conducted together with Deloitte Belgium – now in its 7th edition – that provides a snapshot of the trends and challenges that young high-potential ventures in Belgium have to deal with today. The 2022 study shows that company culture is the No. 1 criterion for choosing an employer, and that finding and recruiting employees is considered the biggest challenge for young scale-ups in order to grow.

Segmentation is key

The second session focused on data and statistics, as access to complete and relevant scale-up data is key to conducting thorough research. The panel discussion revealed that there’s a need for more clear and elaborate definitions of what makes a scale-up, as well as segmentation to better understand scale-ups, their specific characteristics, and the policy measures they require.

What makes a successful scale-up programme?

A third session focused on the current offering of programmes specifically tailored to scale-ups. Comparing factors such as eligibility criteria, selection process, programme structure and measurement of the results of various existing scale-up programmes led to a common understanding that a successful programme is tailor-made, entails mentoring and facilitates peer-to-peer networking.

Veroniek Collewaert: “At Vlerick, we’ve organised both offline and online programmes for scale-ups. Our Scale-up Masterclass remains unique in this regard because of two key aspects. First, it leverages the combination of a self-paced, online programme and real-time webinars in which entrepreneurs can ask all of the remaining questions they have. This enables them to go through the programme at their own pace – which is invaluable, given the limited time and hectic schedules C-levels of scale-ups have. Second, the combination of academics and scale-up founders combines the best of both worlds: it combines experience from the field with large-scale, evidence-based insights – all geared towards making C-levels feel more confident about how to tackle those next growing pains.

How policymaking can support a European ecosystem

The workshop concluded with a discussion led by Philippe Huberdeau, Secretary General of Scale-Up Europe, the new initiative by President Macron to make Europe the new powerhouse for deep tech start-up and scale-up entrepreneurs. He outlined 4 areas of action: finance, talent, deep tech, and interaction between corporates and scale-ups.

Joining forces for success

In his closing speech, Svein Berg, Managing Director at Nordic Innovation, said that stakeholders across the European scale-up ecosystem have valuable insights to learn from each other, and greater European collaboration is the key to success. He concluded with a quote from Henry Ford: “Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” 

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Veroniek Collewaert

Veroniek Collewaert

Professor of Entrepreneurship/Partner