#Innovation: 19,000 jobs created, 4000 new startups and €480 million raised by Europe’s largest innovation network

The European BIC Network publicly launches today (2 June) its ‘EU|BIC Impact Report 2016’ confirming another year of positive support for Europe’s businesses. This report compiled from quantitative and qualitative data demonstrates the added value EU|BICs create in the European economy and in their regional ecosystems. In the 2015 survey, 150 quality certified Business and Innovation Centres throughout Europe have helped create more than 19,000 sustainable jobs and leveraged more than €480 million in funding for innovative small businesses.

As confirmed by the report launched today EU|BICs potential to grow the European economy is to be noticed. Supporting an average of 219 enterprises last year, each EU|BIC helped create on average 154 new direct jobs. In total, the network was responsible for assisting over 27,900 entrepreneurs transforming more than 73,000 innovative ideas into 4,077 new start-ups. In turn, 87% of these are expected to survive beyond three years. The results also show that EU|BICs have fulfilled their inherent public mission by fostering entrepreneurship and innovation values at the local and regional level. In one year only, these 150 quality-certified business centres hosted 2,843 business events engaging a total number of 137,187 participants from Europe and overseas.

Giordano Dichter, responsible for EU|BIC Quality Services at EBN. welcomed the launch of this report: “Considering today’s economic challenges, these results demonstrate the EU|BIC model is highly effective at scaling-up Europe’s innovative small businesses. EU|BICs are the only business support organizations in Europe closely monitored and certified through strict quality criteria. The model is open to any organization working with innovative entrepreneurs who wish to benchmark their efficiency against the only European standard in the field, and boost their performance and impact.”

This year’s impact results can be seen in summary in this infographic. Data was gathered from on-line self-assessment, on-site audits and quality control by EBN.

With 150 certified business centres providing business support to more than 27,900 companies in 2015 alone, the EBN network positions itself as a key stakeholder in the debate on how to realise the scale-up potential of Europe’s startups and SMEs. Based on this evidence, EBN continuously invites European and regional authorities to adopt the EU|BIC model in deploying more efficient business support schemes that deliver sustainable jobs and growth through innovation.

Background

EBN is an established not-for-profit international association of EU|BICs, incubators, innovation centres, clusters and other intermediaries who help innovative start-ups and SMEs develop their innovative businesses. Our members are mostly public-private partnerships with a local economic development remit. EBN’s 250 members are spread over 40 countries in and out of Europe. Of those, around 150 are labelled quality-certified EU|BICs (Business and Innovation Centres). These EU|BICs are exclusively awarded a quality label by EBN that attests the excellence of their business support services. Every year, EBN conducts a performance survey to those 150 EU|BICs in order to track, identify and analyse the network’s added value to the economy. To date, EBN members have created thousands of new businesses and tens of thousands of new skilled and sustainable jobs.

EU|BICs: Incubators, accelerators and other business support organisations whose quality of support services delivered to entrepreneurs is uniquely certified by EBN in collaboration with the European Commission.

Download the full report here.

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