🇪🇺 501.9 Startups. 8.1 Scaleups. What Happens in Between?By: Dr. Hossein Ataei FarEurope’s startup challenge is not simply about creatin...
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🇪🇺 501.9 Startups. 8.1 Scaleups. What Happens in Between?
By: Dr. Hossein Ataei Far
Europe’s startup challenge is not simply about creating more startups. It is about helping them scale.
For years, Europe has measured innovation through indicators such as R&D investment, patents, scientific publications, and research excellence. These measures remain essential, but they tell only part of the story.
The European Innovation Scoreboard provides an important comparative assessment of research and innovation performance across countries. But another question deserves equal attention:
Can Europe turn its strong research and innovation base into companies that grow, create value, and compete globally?
This is where the European Commission’s European Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard (ESSS) provides a valuable complementary perspective.
First published in 2026, the ESSS monitors startup and scaleup ecosystems across EU Member States and provides a comparable framework for understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and competitive positions.
The Scoreboard brings together 36 indicators across six key dimensions:
🔹 Innovation-friendly regulation
🔹 Better financing options
🔹 Fast market uptake and expansion
🔹 Support for top talent
🔹 Infrastructure, networks, and services
🔹 Economic impact
What does the European landscape look like?
The first results identify five EU front-runner ecosystems, each performing above 125% of the EU average in the overall Startup and Scaleup Index:
🇪🇪 Estonia
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇫🇮 Finland
🇳🇱 The Netherlands
🇩🇰 Denmark
Yet one finding stands out in particular: the significant gap between startups and scaleups.
The ESSS reports approximately 501.9 startups per million inhabitants, compared with only 8.1 scaleups per million inhabitants across the EU.
These figures do not, by themselves, explain why companies struggle to scale. But they do highlight an important strategic question:
What happens between starting a company and successfully scaling it?
Is the challenge access to growth capital?
Is it regulation?
Market fragmentation?
Talent attraction and retention?
Infrastructure?
Or the ability to connect research and technology with real industrial customers?
Perhaps the answer lies in all of these factors working together.
The European Commission identifies access to finance—particularly at later stages—as an important constraint for European startup and scaleup ecosystems.
This suggests that building a strong innovation ecosystem is not simply about creating more startups. It is about creating the conditions that allow promising companies to move successfully through the entire journey:
Research → Innovation → Startup → Validation → Market Adoption → Scaleup → Global Expansion → Impact
This is why the ESSS is more than another ranking.
It can serve as a valuable diagnostic tool for understanding where Europe’s innovation ecosystems are performing well—and where bottlenecks may be limiting the ability of promising companies to reach global scale.
Europe already has many of the ingredients needed for success: outstanding universities, researchers, engineers, industrial capabilities, and technologies.
The next challenge is to connect these strengths more effectively—and turn them into sustainable companies, industrial deployment, economic value, and global competitiveness.
🇪🇺 From “Invented in Europe” to “Scaled in Europe.”
Ideally, the journey should be:
Invented in Europe → Validated in Europe → Financed in Europe → Deployed in Europe → Scaled in Europe → Competing globally
There are encouraging signs of progress. The European Commission’s first ESSS shows that the EU’s average startup and scaleup performance in 2025 was around 13 percentage points higher than in 2020, using 2020 as the baseline of 100. However, progress remains uneven across Member States.
At the same time, the Scoreboard indicates that Europe’s ecosystem valuation and high-value outcomes—including centaurs and unicorns per capita—remain significantly behind major international competitors.
This points to a broader strategic challenge:
How can Europe convert its research, technological, and entrepreneurial strengths into more globally competitive companies?
This could become one of the defining challenges—and opportunities—for Europe’s next generation of innovation, entrepreneurship, industrial competitiveness, and economic growth.
What do you think is the biggest barrier to scaling European companies today?
💶 Growth capital
📑 Regulation
🌍 Market access
👩💻 Talent
🏭 Industrial adoption
🔬 Technology transfer
🏗️ Infrastructure
I would be very interested to hear the perspectives of founders, investors, researchers, policymakers, universities, and industry leaders across Europe.
#EuropeanUnion #EuropeanCommission #Startups #Scaleups #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #DeepTech #VentureCapital #Technology #AI #Robotics #DigitalTransformation #Competitiveness #ResearchAndInnovation #Europe #EconomicGrowth
________________________________________
📚 References
1. European Commission — European Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard (Final Report 2026). 36 indicators across six dimensions; front-runner ecosystems, startup/scaleup density, performance trends, ecosystem valuation, and financing constraints.
2. European Commission — EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy. Overview of the ESSS, its six dimensions, performance categories, and policy objectives.
3. European Commission / Publications Office of the EU — European Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard, First Edition (2026). Main report and methodology, including performance trends and ecosystem comparisons.
4. European Commission — European Innovation Scoreboard 2026. Comparative framework for European research and innovation performance.
Links:
https://youtu.be/Sm0wHfKA34Q?si=tDABfyk-rdULZ6dp
https://x.com/EUScienceInnov/status/2060386935911117011?s=20
By: Dr. Hossein Ataei Far
Europe’s startup challenge is not simply about creating more startups. It is about helping them scale.
For years, Europe has measured innovation through indicators such as R&D investment, patents, scientific publications, and research excellence. These measures remain essential, but they tell only part of the story.
The European Innovation Scoreboard provides an important comparative assessment of research and innovation performance across countries. But another question deserves equal attention:
Can Europe turn its strong research and innovation base into companies that grow, create value, and compete globally?
This is where the European Commission’s European Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard (ESSS) provides a valuable complementary perspective.
First published in 2026, the ESSS monitors startup and scaleup ecosystems across EU Member States and provides a comparable framework for understanding their strengths, weaknesses, and competitive positions.
The Scoreboard brings together 36 indicators across six key dimensions:
🔹 Innovation-friendly regulation
🔹 Better financing options
🔹 Fast market uptake and expansion
🔹 Support for top talent
🔹 Infrastructure, networks, and services
🔹 Economic impact
What does the European landscape look like?
The first results identify five EU front-runner ecosystems, each performing above 125% of the EU average in the overall Startup and Scaleup Index:
🇪🇪 Estonia
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇫🇮 Finland
🇳🇱 The Netherlands
🇩🇰 Denmark
Yet one finding stands out in particular: the significant gap between startups and scaleups.
The ESSS reports approximately 501.9 startups per million inhabitants, compared with only 8.1 scaleups per million inhabitants across the EU.
These figures do not, by themselves, explain why companies struggle to scale. But they do highlight an important strategic question:
What happens between starting a company and successfully scaling it?
Is the challenge access to growth capital?
Is it regulation?
Market fragmentation?
Talent attraction and retention?
Infrastructure?
Or the ability to connect research and technology with real industrial customers?
Perhaps the answer lies in all of these factors working together.
The European Commission identifies access to finance—particularly at later stages—as an important constraint for European startup and scaleup ecosystems.
This suggests that building a strong innovation ecosystem is not simply about creating more startups. It is about creating the conditions that allow promising companies to move successfully through the entire journey:
Research → Innovation → Startup → Validation → Market Adoption → Scaleup → Global Expansion → Impact
This is why the ESSS is more than another ranking.
It can serve as a valuable diagnostic tool for understanding where Europe’s innovation ecosystems are performing well—and where bottlenecks may be limiting the ability of promising companies to reach global scale.
Europe already has many of the ingredients needed for success: outstanding universities, researchers, engineers, industrial capabilities, and technologies.
The next challenge is to connect these strengths more effectively—and turn them into sustainable companies, industrial deployment, economic value, and global competitiveness.
🇪🇺 From “Invented in Europe” to “Scaled in Europe.”
Ideally, the journey should be:
Invented in Europe → Validated in Europe → Financed in Europe → Deployed in Europe → Scaled in Europe → Competing globally
There are encouraging signs of progress. The European Commission’s first ESSS shows that the EU’s average startup and scaleup performance in 2025 was around 13 percentage points higher than in 2020, using 2020 as the baseline of 100. However, progress remains uneven across Member States.
At the same time, the Scoreboard indicates that Europe’s ecosystem valuation and high-value outcomes—including centaurs and unicorns per capita—remain significantly behind major international competitors.
This points to a broader strategic challenge:
How can Europe convert its research, technological, and entrepreneurial strengths into more globally competitive companies?
This could become one of the defining challenges—and opportunities—for Europe’s next generation of innovation, entrepreneurship, industrial competitiveness, and economic growth.
What do you think is the biggest barrier to scaling European companies today?
💶 Growth capital
📑 Regulation
🌍 Market access
👩💻 Talent
🏭 Industrial adoption
🔬 Technology transfer
🏗️ Infrastructure
I would be very interested to hear the perspectives of founders, investors, researchers, policymakers, universities, and industry leaders across Europe.
#EuropeanUnion #EuropeanCommission #Startups #Scaleups #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #DeepTech #VentureCapital #Technology #AI #Robotics #DigitalTransformation #Competitiveness #ResearchAndInnovation #Europe #EconomicGrowth
________________________________________
📚 References
1. European Commission — European Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard (Final Report 2026). 36 indicators across six dimensions; front-runner ecosystems, startup/scaleup density, performance trends, ecosystem valuation, and financing constraints.
2. European Commission — EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy. Overview of the ESSS, its six dimensions, performance categories, and policy objectives.
3. European Commission / Publications Office of the EU — European Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard, First Edition (2026). Main report and methodology, including performance trends and ecosystem comparisons.
4. European Commission — European Innovation Scoreboard 2026. Comparative framework for European research and innovation performance.
Links:
https://youtu.be/Sm0wHfKA34Q?si=tDABfyk-rdULZ6dp
https://x.com/EUScienceInnov/status/2060386935911117011?s=20