A lifeline for Europe's young radical innovators

Publishing date: 17 March 2009
Authors: Reinhilde Veugelers

In this Policy Brief, Reinhilde Veugelers shows that Young Innovative Companies (YICs) in Europe achieve significantly higher innovative sales than other innovation-active firms, representing 36% of sales having market novelties. She also confirms that YICs are more affected by credit constraints than other innovation-active firms. If Europe is to exit the current crisis intact and fulfill its full growth potential in the medium term, the author therefore believes Europe must develop policies and incentives which are tailored to the needs of European young radical innovators.

About the authors

Reinhilde Veugelers

Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers is a full professor at KULeuven (BE) at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation. She has been a Senior fellow at Bruegel since 2009. She is also a CEPR Research Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and of the Academia Europeana. From 2004-2008, she was on academic leave, as advisor at the European Commission (BEPA Bureau of European Policy Analysis). She served on the ERC Scientific Council from 2012-2018 and on the RISE Expert Group advising the commissioner for Research. She is a member of VARIO, the expert group advising the Flemish minister for Innovation. She is currently a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of the journal Science and a co-PI on the Science of Science Funding Initiative at NBER.

With her research concentrated in the fields of industrial organisation, international economics and strategy, innovation and science, she has authored numerous well cited publications in leading international journals. Specific recent topics include novelty in technology development, international technology transfers through MNEs, global innovation value chains, young innovative companies, innovation for climate change, industry science links and their impact on firm’s innovative productivity, evaluation of research & innovation policy, explaining scientific productivity, researchers’ international mobility, novel scientific research.

Websites:
https://feb.kuleuven.be/reinhilde.veugelers
https://bruegel.org/author/reinhilde-veugelers/