Foreword

Stimulating successful business creation across all sections of society is an important requirement for achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and responding to economic and social challenges in European Union countries. Entrepreneurship can respond to high rates of unemployment and low levels of labour market participation which are often concentrated in particular sections of society by enabling people to create their own jobs and jobs for others. It is fundamental to the emergence of a more entrepreneurial economy in which new firms offer new solutions to social, economic and environmental challenges. However, many people face barriers to entrepreneurship. They include access to finance, lack of appropriate skills, and lack of business networks. These obstacles are often more important for people from groups that are disadvantaged and under-represented in entrepreneurship, who often face additional barriers related to attitudes, motivations and welfare systems that discriminate against entrepreneurship. Both business development policies and active labour market policies have a role to play in helping overcome these problems. Appropriate actions can be taken at national, regional and local levels and targeted at key groups such as youth, women, seniors, the unemployed, immigrants, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities. This compendium identifies the types of policy approaches that work in overcoming the problems and discusses key factors for their successful implementation.