empirica concluded a study about policies in support of high-growth innovative enterprises (HGIEs) and published two related policy briefs. The first policy brief deals with HGIE characteristics, the second with policies to foster this type of enterprises. Both are available for free download from the study’s homepage at. A summary of a workshop about HGIEs and the presentations of this workshop are also available. empirica conducted this study on behalf of the European Commission’s General Directorate Research and Innovation. Results are mainly based on a survey of HGIEs in 36 innovative industries in eight countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, Switzerland, the USA, Republic of Korea and Japan. The sample included 580 HGIEs.

The study concluded that governments seeking to support HGIEs should consider HGIE characteristics such as older age, possible spin-off origin as well as national and sectoral specificities. Policies should be fine-tuned to improve framework conditions (in particular company taxation and labour law), target key barriers for growth (especially regulations for starting and growing a company, difficult access to finance, a lack of skilled employees), and foster key growth factors (e.g. fostering the ability and readiness to actively target growth) as well as internationalisation of HGIEs (because most of them currently focus on national markets). A focus on high-growth coaching and expanding related networks across Europe may be worthwhile considering. However, a lack of policy evaluation is a key issue. There is as yet only little scientific evidence about the effectiveness and efficiency of specific HGIE support measures on which recommendations to adopt apparently successful measures from one country to another could be based.