What will allow Europe to change into an ideal place to start a company and enable it to lead the way in growing innovative companies that fuel the global economy?
Facebook. Google. Amazon. All born in the USA. There is a continuing debate about whether these kinds of tech giants could ever grow, and more importantly stay, in Europe, or if the European cultures and structure actually prevent that from happening.
Being co-founders of a European technology company, we think they absolutely can, but only if Europe is in for a serious improvement plan.
Europe is not standing still when it comes to starting fast-growing, innovative tech companies, but why is it so hard to grow them into global multinationals? There are significant differences between the US and Europe that result in lower chances of the next €1bn success story being European – and we think that should change.
Looking at the number of big companies in the US and Europe and their founding dates (see graph) portrays quite a shocking picture. Since the beginning of the last century, the number of big European companies founded has been shrinking at an alarming rate. Where is growth and innovation in Europe supposed to come from in the future? What is going to save Europe in the next decade and secure a strong position with competing continents?
Let us face it – we are in a crisis and even if we could manage to get out of the crisis we would still have a structural growth problem.
What will allow Europe to change into an ideal place to start a company and enable it to lead the way in growing innovative companies that fuel the global economy? To find out, read the rest of our article in PDF form here.
