Entrepreneurship

Female entrepreneurs represent just a small proportion of the total number of entrepreneurs in the European Union today. Some of the hurdles facing female entrepreneurs – or would-be entrepreneurs – are related to getting adequate funding, access to the right networks, and finding the right information and advice. In the last few years, some private funds have realised that female founders are not always well served and there is a market gap when it comes to investing in women-led enterprises. This report examines the use of private funds to invest in female entrepreneurs in the European Union and Norway. In addition, it investigates the prevalence of public finance tools and public support schemes that effectively remove barriers and enable women to become competent entrepreneurs.

This report explores the motivations, opportunities and challenges of born globals and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in integrating and managing their global value chains (GVCs). The study also investigates the role of selected policy measures in supporting SME internationalisation, including different types of support in Europe and beyond. The analysis shows how such interventions can be improved to better address the needs of born globals and internationalising SMEs. An in-depth analysis of seven case studies of European born globals and their international partners together with 28 policy measures cross Europe, Australia, USA, Japan and Korea was undertaken. The report considers the barriers to internationalisation and offers suggestions for policy development.

This report maps, analyses and discusses key dimensions and indicators for a comparative framework of industrial relations. It then identifies and assesses existing data sources that can be used to measure the different dimensions of the comparative framework. Lastly, it identifies possible data gaps that may be filled through Eurofound’s future work in the 2017 project, ‘Application of the key dimensions of industrial relations’. The findings highlight the relevance of the key dimensions to European governments and social partners. The conceptual framework and the key dimensions proposed may serve as a monitoring instrument to assess the developments in principles, values and their operational application in the industrial relations systems in the EU.