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Helsinki Voted Top For European Entrepreneurs |
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| 02/04/2009 | |
| Finland's capital Helsinki has topped the European Cities Entrepreneurship Rating (ECER) poll of the cities viewed by entrepreneurs as best in Europe for doing business. Coordinated entrepreneurship training and education is cited as one reason Helsinki does so well. Scandinavian countries, and the northern countries of Finland, Sweden, Germany and Austria are in general doing a better job of satisfying their entrepreneurs than the southern countries of Greece and Italy. Stockholm and Munich achieve second and third place respectively. The highest ranked French city is Lille at eleven, while Valencia, at 12, is Spain’s highest ranking city. Italy’s top ranking city, Naples, is at 30. UK cities, which performed very well in the same poll in 2007, have this time slipped down the table. In 2007, Birmingham was third on the list and London came fifth. This year London is listed at number 29. In Helsinki, several institutions are dedicated to entrepreneurship, such as the Helsinki School of Creative Entrepreneurship, which is central to entrepreneurship promotion and training in the Helsinki area. This School is interconnected with multiple economic and social networks locally, and in the past few years has built many partnerships with local development agencies in the area. Helskinki\'s heavy investment in entrepreneurship is reflected by the recent Helsinki Metropolitan Entrepreneurship Academy programme, which began in January 2009. For several years Finland has also supported research programmes nationally that foster entrepreneurship. This latest 'perception' survey involved contacting almost 2,400 entrepreneurs by telephone in 14 different languages, in 37 major European cities across 19 countries. The cities selected for comparison were: Berlin, Madrid, Riga, Stockholm, Barcelona, Warsaw, Lyon, Gothenburg, Hamburg, Valencia, Paris, Lisbon, Malmo, Helsinki, Porto, Geneva, Munich, Athens, London, Brussels, Frankfurt, Lille, Budapest, Manchester, Amsterdam, Cologne, Rome, Birmingham, Marseille, Prague, Dusseldorf, Milan, Vienna, Naples, Dublin, Copenhagen, and Turin. This selection was based on four criteria, and interviewers asked 36 closed questions based on five themes: 1. accessibility and promotion of entrepreneurship; 2. pre-creation support: start-up advice, project diagnosis, incubation, etc.; 3. post-creation support: advice, monitoring, identification of partnerships, etc.; 4. funding: aid, subsidies, access to loans, seed capital, development capital, etc.; 5. environment: property, quality of life and infrastructure, training, sustainable development, etc. The ECER's website gives details of the results and describes the survey methodology. |
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