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At the opening ceremony of the EBN Annual Conference 2010 in Burgos, “Smart policies for innovative territories”, it was highlighted the necessity to continue performing activities for supporting entrepreneurs in Europe. Relevant findings were discussed during the plenary session “Smart enablers for boosting open entrepreneurship”: Pietro Moncada, from the European Commission Research Centre, in his report “Small and leading young innovative firms in the EU” stated that young companies active in R&D in Europe are fewer that in the US and that EU is lacking firms among young leading innovators (YLI).

According to him, the critical factors for the growth of smaller young firms, role and challenges of smart enablers are:

• Skills in S&T management together with business management (training and culture on R&D and innovation management and mastering best businesses management practices);
• Access to capital (human and financial);
• Open and global access to markets and knowledge suppliers and users (business and institutional environment and tailored support mechanisms);
• Cooperation in R&D and innovation between smaller/younger firms with peers and with incumbents leading in innovation.

Pietro Moncada also stressed that, overall, the EU has limited ability to make smaller and younger companies growing and that what is needed is improving the flows of knowledge/ideas, projects and investments (content enablers, context enablers and financing and networking enablers).