The recently released EU Competitiveness Report from the European Commission delivered a stark message to the blocs tech sector.
As Mario Draghi, lead author of the report, warned, Europe faces an existential challenge.
The problem is not thatEuropelacks ideas or ambition, the former Italian premier said.
But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Is now the right time to expand to the US?
The US has long been a destination of choice for European entrepreneurs looking to expand their business.
Many also consider the ease of expanding across the US market once they already have an established entity.
However, Shapiro warns laws and regulations can vary from state to state.
Europe has the advantage, frankly, of having an EU-wide system encompassing privacy and AI.
That has dried up a bit of theinvestmentmoney, Shapiro says.
And this uncertainty brings us to the elephant in the room.
Over-regulation is one issue Van Oranje highlighted.
So for the whole healthtech market, Europe has made itself very unattractive.
Right now theres a lot of legal uncertainty.
Another challenge is how future-proof the Act can be in a market thats moving at lightning speed.
He put forward the example of GDPR.
Standardised rules across Europe is absolutely a good thing.
Standardised system of the laws is even better.
Theres no reason why Europe couldnt have done the same using the tax instrument.
But we decided not to do it.
So again, this is something that could have been avoided.
Google, Tesla, and many more of the biggest companies are driven and led by foreign talent.
