GEDI Analysis Tõnis Arro

What is GEDI? Global Entrepreneurship Development Index – profile entrepreneurship ecosystem – identify bottlenecks – policy suggestions 15 pillars in categories: Entrepreneurial Aspirations, Attitudes, Abilities GEDI Index includes 120 countries Bases on different comparisons: against EU29, efficiency driven countries, selected peers…

GEDI process Analytical Work, Core Group Debates Profile Estonian ecosystem, identify initial list of bottleneck themes Focus Group Discussions with Key Stakeholders Debate and enrich bottleneck themes, explore bottleneck causes Implementation Taskforces Agree and prioritise policy action, implementation plan Post-engagement Implementation, follow-up and monitoring (at least a year) We are here!

ESTONIAN BOTTLENECKS:  Attitudes: Perceptions of Risks and Rewards Associated with Entrepreneurship  Skills: Skills for Entrepreneurship  Capital: Capital Availability for Entrepreneurship  Innovation: Lack of motivation of the vast majority of companies to innovate. Low sophistication and value-added entrepreneurship and incentive regime for innovation

Some deeper insights:  Attitudes:  Unclear understanding of what an entrepreneur does  Entrepreneurs aren’t highly valued in the society  Low risk appetite  Relations aren’t valued in entrepreneurship  Estonians don’t plan their career path

Some deeper insights  Skills  Their development isn’t dealt with early enough  Basic knowledge about entrepreneurship is low, of growth as well  Entrepreneurship education isn’t systematic  Skills taught today don’t match the future economy needs and low development of soft skills

Some deeper insights  Innovation  Comfort-zone driven entrepreneurship is dominant  Low level and simplistic collaboration  Lack of incentives for private money to invest into innovation  Not enough pull for innovation  IP – low experience, incentives, system performance

Some deeper insights  Capital  Lack of smart specialized capital sources  Pension funds don’t invest enough locally  Inflexible and expensive tax system  1-4 MEUR is hard to raise in Estonia or through Estonian company  Growing deficiency of ambitious projects to invest in

Israel vs Estonia IsraelEstonia Potential entrepreneurs 24% 19.4% Nascent entrepreneurs 5.3%8.8% New entrepreneurs 4.8%4.5% Established companies 5.9%5.0% Growth ambition 29%27% New-to-market products 57%49% High status of entrepreneurs 80%59%

Thank you very much!