The European Commission considers entrepreneurship and innovation as a key to growth, employment and wellbeing in Europe. However, the Commission sees considerable deficits related to entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe, compared to other regions in the world – notably North America and East Asia.

In recent years, research has widely substantiated the importance of high-growth innovative enterprises (HGIEs) for job creation. The number and share of HGIEs in all enterprises is small, but the number and share of jobs they create is disproportionally large. However, Europe has apparently performed relatively badly in generating HGIEs that quickly become global leaders. Therefore Europe is eager to find effective ways to promote HGIEs.

There is uncertainty about how to best design policy measures to support high-growth innovative enterprises in order to reach the desired impact. This study is designed to provide answers to some of the open questions about HGIEs and policies to foster them.