Business schools establish the European Scaleup Institute

Six renowned European business schools have launched the European Scaleup Institute (ESI). The initiative is designed to help young companies scale their business model.

It was founded by a consortium of Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany), Vlerick Business School (Belgium), Rotterdam School of Management and Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (Netherlands), ESSEC Business School (France), ESADE Business School (Spain) and Nova School of Business and Economics (Portugal). Additional support for the new institute comes from Nordic Innovation, a venture of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

With the new institute, we want to expand our academic and business knowledge about what it takes for companies to follow a successful growth path.

Prof. Dr. Dries Faems, holder of the Chair of Entrepreneurship at WHU

The core task of the ESI is to pool expertise in the field of entrepreneurship. The aim is to use this knowledge to help young companies scale their business model on a large scale. The provision of practice-relevant research results, close interaction with experienced founders and the use of best-practice examples for constant growth are to be directly applicable to the challenges faced by company founders. Thus, a central interface in Europe for knowledge on scaling companies is to be created.

Many start-up companies fail at the transitions between the start-up, growth and scaling phases. The ESI aims to lower these thresholds through active science-based support. This is intended to strengthen the European business location and the European innovation power.

The official startup date falls on June 1, 2023 at the Scaleup Conference at the Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon, Portugal.