Small and medium enterprises are an often overlooked part of the economy. In Europe alone, however, there are approximately 22.5 million SMEs that employ over 80 million people between them. Indeed, the European Commission regards them as the engine of the European economy.
Despite this importance, they’re an often overlooked group, as they’re not considered sufficiently high growth to attract the wide range of VC-led support that fuels accelerators, incubators, and corporate venturing.
Research from MIT illustrates that while the kind of exponential growth that startups target is not without value, we should also loathe dismissing the more gradual growth targeted by SMEs, especially in a