The European Scaleup Institute is a platform of academic experts and practitioners in Europe for scaleups, high-growth firms, governmental organisations and policymakers to address the scaleup gap.
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BRIDGING THE SCALEUP GAP
EUROPEAN SCALEUP INSTITUTE
Scaling and high-growth firms play a pivotal role in our economy as champions of innovation and job creation. Known for experimenting with new technologies, concepts and business models, startups are key to bring innovative value to the market. However, they can only maximise their impact once they manage to scale up. The unfortunate reality is that only a fraction of startups manage to scale up, especially in the European context. Scaling and high-growth firms also face a number of pertinent challenges as they transition from starting up, to growing up, to scaling up, and try to persist high-growth over time.
The European Scaleup Institute is a platform of academic experts and practitioners in Europe for scaleups, high-growth firms, governmental organisations and policymakers to address the scaleup gap.
OUR MISSION
Enable Europe to become a leading global scaleup ecosystem
We’re working towards an integrated scaleup agenda. These are our objectives:
Inspiring European scaleups
Inspiring a wide audience of scaleups, with research insights, programmes and tools
Aligning knowledge
Working to standardise data and knowledge. Sharing and validating insight across borders.
Creating and sharing best practice
Creating and sharing best practice at company and ecosystem level.
Joint research initiatives
Setting up initiatives involving world-class European universities, business schools and professionals.
Faculty exchange programmes
Fostering faculty programmes. Sharing best practice for scaleup programmes and entrepreneurship education.
“Scaling up is not a challenge of an individual country or region. 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 a European-level”
Prof. dr. Justin Jansen
(Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship and Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University)
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OUR PARTNERS
Vlerick
Vlerick Centre for Excellence in Scale-Ups
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship
ESSEC
Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Nova School of Business & Economiocs (Nova SBE)
The Nova SBE Haddad Entrepreneurship Institute
WHU
The Chair of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technological Transformation
Esade
Scaleup & Growth Strategy Centre
LUISS
LUISS Business School
Galway
Centre for Entrepreneurial Growth and Scaling
GET TO KNOW
OUR PARTNERS
Vlerick Centre for Excellence in Scale-Ups
Vlerick
Vlerick’s scaleup centre launched in 2014 – and in the intervening years it has run programmes for more than 300 European scaleup companies. Our Scaleup Masterclass has been designed to help entrepreneurs overcome growing pains, and features learnings from entrepreneurs and academics across the world.
On the research side, we publish both local and international practitioner-oriented reports that offer benchmarks for entrepreneurs. These include the Rising Star Monitor and the European Scaleup Report. Academically, we focus on funding sources including business angels, venture capital, crowdfunding, private equity and impact investing. We also explore early people issues including formation of the founding team, contracting and early employees.
We’ve also developed many hands-on tools including:
• Growth Scan – which assesses maturity and readiness to grow
• Founding Team Checklist – which sets out the key people-related decisions that founders need to make
• Playbooks – which help founders to conquer growing pains with advice on everything from how to build and scale culture, through to performance and cash management
We support entrepreneurs from start-up to scaleup with the Vlerick Entrepreneurship Academy. This is a community that brings together entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey, helping them to address challenges at different phases of growth.
Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Part of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the centre works with top academics and facilitators to foster entrepreneurial competencies and drive innovation. This is achieved through high-quality research and education – locally and globally. Our team of 35+ researchers and trainers and four full professors creates and shares knowledge to help organisations achieve sustainable, high growth – and societal impact. We empower students, entrepreneurs and professionals to discover and develop their entrepreneurial competencies and drive positive change for their communities. A large part of our research focuses on providing insights into start-up businesses, scaleup businesses and innovation ecosystems. These insights contribute to developing local, regional and international ecosystems. They also provide entrepreneurs with the tools to scale their ventures sustainably. A great example of this is our research into municipal and regional ecosystems. We also provide annual insights into the climate of Dutch high-growth firms through the ScaleUp Dashboard and the Top 250 Scaleup publications. And we’re involved in developing several scaleup and entrepreneurial leadership programmes, together with key industry and knowledge partners in the ecosystem.
Visit websiteNova SBE Haddad Entrepreneurship Institute
Nova SBE
The Nova SBE Haddad Entrepreneurship Institute is highly committed to changing the world by leveraging the potential of entrepreneurs. Either by supporting new businesses in all stages and/or developing entrepreneurial skills in students and professionals, and/or even by sharing knowledge on different entrepreneurial topics, trends and methodologies.
Our mission is to advance knowledge and empower entrepreneurial minds to best serve the world.
As well as helping new ventures, we also advance knowledge around scaleup companies and high-growth firms. We offer programmes that develop high-growth leadership teams and board members. We produce academic research into scaling up and thought leadership. We also act as a platform for connecting scaleup founders.
Scaleup & Growth Strategy Centre
Esade
Part of the Esade Entrepreneurship Institute, we’re led by Prof Dimo Ringov, and we’re supported by an international network of leading researchers, doctoral students, managers and staff. We focus on scaling, growth, and internationalisation in both new and established businesses.
Our mission is to provide thought leadership and best practice on scaleups, scaling and growth/internationalisation strategy. We achieve this through research, teaching, new venture ideation, creation and acceleration, knowledge sharing, and support for scaleup companies, fast-scaling businesses and ecosystems in Spain, Europe and the world.
Our key activities include:
• Running an accelerator programme for Spanish female entrepreneurs whose businesses are entering the scaleup stage
• Supporting a survey of scale-ups in the Barcelona metropolitan area
• Organising academic and practitioner conferences on scaling and scaleups
• Developing and delivering specialised courses on scaling for the Esade MBA, EMBA and executive education programmes
The Chair of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technological Transformation
WHU
Our mission is to educate, inspire, and support the WHU community to foster impassioned, purposeful, ethical, and sustainable entrepreneurship. To do this, we provide an intellectual, virtual, and physical hub where people connect, ideas turn into action, and resources are allocated equitably. This builds a vibrant entrepreneurial future for students, alumni, and other ecosystem partners. The WHU Entrepreneurship Center delivers a wide range of academic and experiential learning activities including courses, workshops, training and practical programmes. This further establishes WHU as a comprehensive and connected hub in Germany’s vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystem. We also coordinate the WHU Accelerator. This is an equity-free, seven-week, intensive programme for WHU students, alumni, and staff. In the first phase, mentors give founders feedback on their business models. The second phase focuses on product-market fit. And in the third phase, we concentrate on fundraising. The programme culminates in founders pitching to an audience of potential investors and guests.
Visit websiteCenter for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
ESSEC
The "Leading a ScaleUp" Chair at ESSEC partners with the scale-up ecosystem to prepare high-growth and high impact professionals for roles within scale-up companies or a company that is within the scaleup ecosystem. These professionals learn the unique leadership competencies needed to lead within hyper-growth organizations. They learn how scale-ups grow organizationally and professionally to meet the agile demands of their growth, the market, and society at large. The “Leading a ScaleUp” Chair at ESSEC curates evidence-based practices through original research and consulting missions for the scale-up ecosystem. The Chair’s mission is supported by the following partners: Alcméon; Colonies; In Extenso Innovation Croissance as well as from the CY France 2030 initiative. Established: September 2022.
Visit websiteLUISS Business School
LUISS
Luiss Business School - headquartered in Rome with hubs in Milan, Amsterdam and Belluno and integral part of Luiss University – has long standing competences in entrepreneurship through experienced faculty in teaching, research and advisory. Luiss Business School closely collaborates with Luiss EnLabs, which is one of Italy’s biggest acceleration programs and related to LVentureGroup, a well-known venture capital firm. Collaboration includes a research project focusing on coachability of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial team formation within the Next Generation EU project “Rome Technopole”. In addition, based on specific competences in entrepreneurial finance, Luiss Business School and Luiss EnLabs jointly offer a “Flex Executive Programme in Venture Capital”. LA4G (Luiss Alumni for Growth) is an investment club related to startups related to Luiss providing mainly seed funding. Luiss Business School has developed an entrepreneurship funnel for potentially all business school students with the final goal of creating startups ready for acceleration. Entrepreneurship is an integral part of the DNA of Luiss Business School.
Visit websiteCentre for Entrepreneurial Growth and Scaling
GALWAY
Co-founders Jonathan Levie (Professor of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development at University of Galway) and Esther Tippmann (Professor of Strategy, Leadership and Change at University of Galway) established the Centre for Entrepreneurial Growth and Scaling (CEGS) in 2019 with the aim of supporting the entrepreneurial growth and scaling of indigenous and foreign-owned businesses. Combining our excellence in research, innovative teaching pedagogies and outreach, we focus on the post start-up entrepreneurial journey of businesses that have achieved product-market fit and are now striving to scale their operations. Our focus extends to managing their global scaling, including the management of their international offices. Our research identifies the key challenges in attaining successful scaling and we translate these insights into practice through our outreach programmes for managers of scaling firms and scaleup advisors. The Centre’s motto is “enabling scaling success”. CEGS is funded by the University of Galway’s Strategic Fund, the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, and the Western Development Commission. For more details visit website:
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DEDICATED TEAM OF
PROFESSIONALS
Miguel Meuleman
Veroniek Collewaert
Yannick Dillen
Leonardo Fuligni
Katty Hsu
Nehir Yasar
Dries Faems
Euclides Major
Dimo Ringov
David Sluss
Justin Jansen
Joris Ebbers
Christian Lechner
