Every year, Europe produces world-class science. We lead in public research funding, scientific output, and patent filings per capita. And yet, when it comes to translating that research into usable, scalable innovation, Europe is falling short.
"Europe now hosts more early-stage startups than any other region globally, with over 35,000 such companies, reflecting a vibrant entrepreneurial spirit. [...] around 60% of all global scale-ups are based in North America, while only 8% are based in the EU."
— Startups and Scaleups in Europe (EC Report, March 2025)
Fragmented markets force startups to navigate regulations, public procurement, and reimbursement schemes in 27 national systems, each with its own legal and institutional nuance. Startups in fintech and medtech face varying licensing and reporting requirements in each country (European Parliament, 2025), while uneven public procurement practices often disadvantage SMEs (European Commission, Single Market Scoreboard). For instance, under the Medical Devices Regulation (MDR), the average time to obtain certification from most notified bodies as of February 2025 was 13–18 months.
This maze of national rules makes scaling across the EU slow, costly, and complex. Yet Europe has all the ingredients to build resilient, high-performing innovation ecosystems: world-class research institutions, a large and growing startup base, and committed public and private stakeholders. The challenge is not the lack of ideas or talent, it’s the lack of coordinated ecosystem structures that connect founders, investors, universities, regulators, and service providers in ways that accelerate learning, reduce friction, and enable startups to scale across borders.
Understanding how ecosystem design impacts resilience and commercialization is critical to unlocking Europe’s innovation potential.
How Well-Designed Ecosystems Drive Economic Performance
Entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems are crucial levers for economic growth, resilience, and competitiveness. Many regions struggle to convert local talent, research, and capital into tangible economic outcomes, highlighting a key problem: fragmented or poorly coordinated innovation networks often fail to unlock their full potential.
The solution lies in designing ecosystems intentionally, integrating actors and resources so that startups, investors, research institutions, and policymakers work in harmony.
Research Insights: What Makes an Ecosystem Successful
A growing body of research highlights the critical ingredients that make innovation ecosystems thrive. When these elements are present and well-aligned, the ecosystem becomes a self-reinforcing engine of growth, innovation, and economic value.
Key Drivers of Ecosystem Success
Buratti (2025) and Fotopoulos (2025) emphasize how network structure, knowledge exchange, and access to resources drive innovation:
- Ecosystem Synergy: Diverse actors (entrepreneurs, universities, investors, incubators, and corporates) interact to create innovation capacity.
- Knowledge Spillovers: Cross-industry and cross-organization knowledge flows are critical for high-tech entrepreneurship.
- Human Capital: Skilled workers and talent availability underpin venture creation and growth.
- Financial Resources: Access to venture capital enables startup growth and ecosystem sustainability.
- Institutional Quality & Culture: Strong institutions and supportive entrepreneurial culture enhance ecosystem performance.
- Diversification over Specialization: Regions benefit from varied industrial bases rather than narrow clustering.
Outcomes of Well-Designed Ecosystems
The studies above and the EC's Beyond Fragmentation report show that when ecosystems are well-structured—featuring strong networks, knowledge flows, access to talent and capital, and supportive institutional frameworks—the benefits extend far beyond individual startups:
- Accelerated Innovation: Effective knowledge exchange and collaboration among startups, universities, investors, and corporates foster faster development of new products, services, and technologies.
- Sustainable Growth: Access to diverse funding sources and skilled labor ensures startups can scale efficiently and maintain long-term viability.
- Regional Cohesion: Connected ecosystems reduce fragmentation, allowing smaller or peripheral regions to benefit from proximity to established hubs, shared resources, and cross-border collaboration.
- Talent Retention and Mobility: Vibrant ecosystems attract and retain highly skilled workers, counteracting brain drain and enhancing regional human capital.
- Increased Investment Flows: Harmonized regulatory environments and well-structured support networks encourage venture capital investment and broader participation from investors.
- Resilient Ecosystems: Networks of accelerators, incubators, and policy support contribute to ecosystem adaptability, enabling startups to navigate challenges such as market shifts or funding gaps.
- Enhanced Competitiveness: By linking fragmented regions and fostering collaboration, ecosystems contribute to national and continental innovation capacity, positioning Europe to compete globally.
By designing an ecosystem with these principles, we directly solve the fragmentation problem that limits innovation. This design-driven approach transforms a scattered set of actors into a coordinated engine of growth, making innovation more predictable, scalable, and resilient.
The Role of Corporates in Ecosystem Success
Corporates are often overlooked but play a pivotal role in scaling startups. Through partnerships, procurement, and co-innovation, large enterprises can provide startups with:
- Market access (e.g., pilot programs, distribution channels).
- Validation (e.g., corporate-backed proof-of-concepts).
- Resources (e.g., expertise, infrastructure, and funding).
For example, Philips is a global health-technology leader that actively co-innovates with startups. Through Philips Ventures and its Supplier Innovation Portal, the company invites external partners to solve defined challenges and co-develop solutions in areas like diagnostic imaging and connected care — showing how a corporate can anchor and amplify an entire regional innovation ecosystem.
From Fragmented Programs to Connected Ecosystems
For decades, Europe has tried to boost innovation by adding more programs: accelerators, funds, policies. But we are hitting a productivity wall: many of these initiatives deliver only marginal gains, as can be seen in recent studies about accelerator effectiveness.
What if these marginal gains could be amplified through increased connectivity and orchestration within and between existing ecosystems? The opportunity is clear: a well-crafted ecosystem is a superior platform for innovation, delivering measurable economic impact that disconnected programs cannot achieve. Imagine a world where ecosystem actors—universities, TTOs, investors, incubators, corporates, and policymakers—can coordinate around:
- Shared visibility: knowing who’s doing what, when support is needed, and how to transition innovators (founders and researchers alike) smoothly between stages.
- Continuous support: adaptive assistance that evolves with innovators, replacing episodic “join this 12-week program” interventions. Timing becomes the defining quality of support.
Europe is already showing the first signs of this shift:
- EU programs emphasize ecosystem connectivity and open collaboration.
- Innovation hubs experiment with unified access points for founders and researchers.
- Networks Are Measured by Impact, Not Just Outputs.
Unlike platforms like Dealroom or Crunchbase, which focus on established startups and investor data, or regional hubs like Station F or Yes!Delft, which offer physical spaces and local networks, Europe needs a digital layer that connects and orchestrates the entire ecosystem—especially for researchers and early-stage founders who lack business models or entrepreneurial networks.
Example: A Founder’s Journey
Imagine you are a medtech founder in Rotterdam. You have a lab prototype that could cut diagnostic time in half. To turn it into a viable business, you must navigate a fragmented innovation ecosystem: grants, regulatory steps, incubators, clinical partners, IP, and early funding. Your options:
- Going it alone: You discover opportunities and contacts by trial and error. Each misstep—a rejected grant, a stalled pilot, or a misfiled patent— adds months. Progress is slow because the ecosystem is opaque, unstructured, and often unfriendly to cold contact requests.
- With human guidance: Mentors or support offices provide advice and connections, but expanding your network is manual and dependent on warm introductions. Leads arrive slowly, and competing demands on your guide’s time create bottlenecks. Some dead ends are avoided, but the journey is still long and sequential.
- With digital guidance: The ecosystem is mapped, prioritized, and searchable in real time. Relevant grants, incubators, hospitals, regulatory steps, and investors are surfaced automatically, enabling parallel workflows. Opportunities arrive in your inbox as they appear, accelerating validation of your business model and bringing your innovation to patients faster.
Addressing the Challenges
While the vision is compelling, orchestrating ecosystems at scale is not without risks:
- Data Privacy: Ensuring compliance with GDPR and other regulations while sharing insights across borders.
- Resistance to Change: Convincing stakeholders to adopt new tools and workflows.
- Misaligned Incentives: Balancing the needs of founders, investors, corporates, and policymakers.
Eunovus is designing tools that mitigate these risks through:
- Secure, permission-based data sharing to protect sensitive information.
- Pilot programs with early adopters to demonstrate value before scaling.
- Collaborative design processes to ensure all stakeholders see clear benefits from participation.
By orchestrating actors and aligning support with real-time needs, ecosystems can unlock higher startup success, faster innovation, and greater economic impact.
Building Europe’s Next Layer of Resilience
When ecosystems coordinate well, the results are transformative. Connected clusters across Europe are being created to accelerate product validation, scale-up, and cross-sector learning. Life-sciences innovation alone supports 29 million jobs and generates €1.5 trillion in value—yet these benefits remain unevenly distributed.
As policy momentum finally starts to align with the reality of ecosystems, it is essential that we design support systems that deliver the right connection at the right time—for founders, universities, corporates, and regions alike. Europe doesn’t need more isolated programs. It needs a way to make its vast innovation assets play in harmony.
Eunovus is exploring a new approach: a platform designed to bring ecosystem actors together, surface real-time insights, and make connections when they matter most. Unlike existing tools, it will be built for researchers and early-stage founders, helping them navigate Europe’s fragmented landscape with preparation, automation, and orchestration.
The next leap in Europe’s innovation capacity won’t come from more programs. It will come from smarter coordination, insight, and timing.
Join the Conversation
Whether you are an innovator, funder, corporate partner, or play an ecosystem-supporting role, I’d love to hear your perspective.
How does fragmentation affect your work? Share your biggest challenge in the form below. Your input will shape how we design the platform.
- Where do you see fragmentation slowing progress in your region?
- Where do founders face timing gaps that hold back growth?
- What would make a platform like this most useful for you?
Your insights will help shape the next generation of connected commercialization support.