Innovation in Practice: Europe delivers.

There is no doubt: innovation in Europe is accelerating at a rapid pace. The European Commission and several EU Member States have launched new funding instruments for startups and scaleups, joining the ranks of private investors who are increasing their investments in European innovation. These developments back up my predictions and commitments from my first LinkedIn post.

Innovation is flourishing all throughout EU: first unicorn in Bulgaria and meet up with the innovation actors in Bulgaria.

I am pleased to see that the improved innovation performance is reaching all corners of Europe. I am proud to say that my native country, Bulgaria, got its first unicorn last week: Payhawk. Congratulations to them!

?I was honoured to meet with Hristo Borisov (founder Payhawk - The financial system of tomorrow) and another 40 founders, investors and ecosystem players last Thursday in the first meet-up of the whole innovation ecosystem of Bulgaria. They are taking their own future in hands by cooperating as part of the Bulgaria Innovation Forum.

This meeting was the first of a series of meet-ups that I am planning to have with all national innovation ecosystems across Europe. I will engage with all of them to ensure that national innovation fora are created everywhere. My ultimate objective is to set up a genuine pan-European Innovation Ecosystem, a network of all national innovation networks.

The Bulgarian case demonstrates that all European regions have the potential to become thriving innovation ecosystems thanks to the most important component for success: a well-developed talent pool. Talent attracts capital. The investment in startups in Bulgaria multiplied by ten, from €16 million in 2020 to €174 million in 2021. We are seeing similar investment increases across all European countries.

Let me share with you the main takeaways of this meet-up: 1. Increasing EU pension funds participating as Limited Partners in Venture Capital funds, 2. Fostering entrepreneurship in education, 3. Developing and supporting the local innovation ecosystem, 4. Focusing on deep tech to bring ‘brick and mortar’ industry into the innovation ecosystem. I believe startup communities all over Europe can make these recommendations theirs. This is what I want to check with other national innovation ecosystems.?

Let’s take the future in our hands…

In these challenging times, with a war at our borders, we need to ensure strengthening our Strategic Innovation Autonomy and show solidarity. We must continue to increase our efforts to make Europe the global leader in innovation and startups. We must take concrete actions. Only through innovation leadership, the EU can take its future on its own hands and develop solutions that will ensure our Strategic Innovation Autonomy.?

Photo - Meet-up in MolenGeek with the European Innovation Ecosystems Leaders. Peter Vesterbacka - Nicolas Brien - Markus Raunig - Bruno Vandegehuchte - Michal Kardos - David Hanf - Guillaume Chatelain - Jan Bormans

I am glad to see that the European startup community is taking actions to support Ukrainian innovators, like the ones announced by the European Startup Network. I was honoured to meet with many of the persons behind these announcements to support Ukrainian innovators in MolenGeek with its founder Ibrahim Ouassari. There, we also took stock of where we stand in implementing the recommendations they made to me last May to Make Europe the Global PowerHouse for Startups. We are working together on concrete new actions to be implemented in 2022 and 2023.

Walking the talk: The biggest ever European Commission’s annual funding (€1.7 billion) for visionary entrepreneurs via the European Innovation Council (EIC)

On 9 February, the European Innovation Council (EIC), a European Commission initiative, announced a €1.7 billion program for deep tech startups in their scale-up phase for 2022. This is the EU's largest investment ever in startups in a single year. It also places the EIC amongst Europe's top investors in this category. Furthermore, the novel approach of taking equity in startups is attracting a large number of private investors to crowd in investment into EIC beneficiaries.

The new EIC work programme includes several firsts, such as the EIC ScaleUP 100, a dedicated support to women innovators (Women TechEU), and individual investments exceeding €15 million per startup. The EIC ScaleUp 100 will bring together 100 of Europe's most promising scaleups. These scaleups will receive attention from investors and increase visibility, and I hope that many of them will become unicorns: this is our genuine goal. The Women TechEU program's budget will be increased from €2 million to €10 million.

Welcome the new European Tech Champion Initiative (ETCI)

?The European Tech Champion Initiative (ETCI) was announced the day before, on 8 February, by several EU Member States and the EIB group. The ETCI aims at a volume of €10 billion or more, with €3.5 billion available from the outset. It will concentrate on establishing at least ten investment funds. The goal is to assist startups in raising rounds in the order of €100 million.

To continue the amazing investment levels in 2021… and 2022

These concrete actions by the Commission and the EU Member States coincide with a surge in private investment in Europe. It began in 2021 and it will continue apace in 2022.

The European Venture Capital market set a new record in 2021, with €100 billion invested (€61 billion in startups with EU headquarters), nearly three times the 2020 investment of €35 billion.

And 2022 has begun with even more vigour! In the first two months, €12 billion were invested in startups with EU headquarters. If this trend continues, we can anticipate a new investment peek in 2022. As the latest findings from the study “In search of EU unicorns. What do we know about them?” ?show, Unicorns in the EU are no longer strange and unique species. There is one (or few) appearing every week.?

And for what type of innovations? Deep tech.

Deep tech innovation is exactly what Europe requires. Synapse Medicine, for example, raised €25 million on 1 March for its platform, which uses natural language processing to analyse and classify medication information from multiple sources. DRONAMICS’ Black Swan cargo unmanned air vehicle to transport cargo that will starts test flights from Malta to Italy this year. Volocopter, develops electric urban air mobility solutions and recently raised €156 million at a pre-money valuation of €1.56 billion. The good news for European innovation keeps coming in.

With strong and concerted commitments from the public and private sectors, Europe remains on solid ground in its pursuit of becoming a leader in innovation. In difficult times, such as these, we must remain strong and united!