This open access book builds on the European Union’s (EU) Horizon 2020 project ‘Financial and Institutional Reforms for an Entrepreneurial Society’ (FIRES). The authors outline how Europe can move towards more inclusive, innovative and sustainable growth through reforms that will rekindle its entrepreneurial spirit. Based on decades of research and countless discussions with stakeholders, the book also features the FIRES project’s full list of policy interventions and institutional reforms that can help policymakers make that agenda a reality.

“The causal relationships behind the emergence of entrepreneurship in regions and nations are hard to identify and replicate. A reasonable entrepreneurship policy is therefore one based on economic theory and available evidence, coupled with a holistic approach that takes into account the specific situation of each region or country and which avoids one-size-fits-all recommendations. For such an entrepreneurship policy, The Entrepreneurial Society should be mandatory reading.” (Karl Wennberg, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Vol. 30, 2020)

Niklas Elert is a research fellow at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm, Sweden. He received his Ph.D. on the topic of Economic Dynamism – essays on firm entry and firm growth in 2014 at Örebro University, Sweden. His current research focuses on entrepreneurship and firm dynamics. 
Magnus Henrekson is a professor and president of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm, Sweden. Until 2009, he was the Jacob Wallenberg professor at the Department of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. Since the end of the 1990s, his primary research field has been entrepreneurship economics.
Mark Sanders is an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics (The Netherlands). His teaching and research involve connecting entrepreneurship, innovation and the transition towards more sustainable economic growth. Mark is also a member of the Sustainable Finance Lab that aims to make financial markets contribute towards this transition.