What kind of innovation model does Europe need to stay competitive without losing its own strengths?
In a conversation hosted by Sigli in collaboration with BMI Executive Institute, Prof. Rudy Aernoudt, European economist, co-founder of the European Business Angels Network (EBAN), professor at Ghent University, and lecturer in the BMI Executive Institute EMBA programme, shared a clear perspective on Europe’s growth challenge.
According to Prof. Aernoudt, Europe should not try to copy the US or China. Its strength lies elsewhere: in building an innovation model grounded in entrepreneurship, responsible capital, human judgement, and long-term value creation.
The real issue, he argues, is not the lack of ideas. Europe creates many start-ups. The challenge begins when promising companies need to scale, attract growth capital, and compete beyond national markets.
Europe should build from its own strengths
Prof. Aernoudt’s argument is direct: Europe needs its own model of growth.
The US model is built around speed, scale, capital intensity, and a high tolerance for risk. China’s model is shaped by state direction, industrial policy, and centralised execution. Europe, in his view, should not try to replicate either.
Instead, Europe has an opportunity to build an innovation model that reflects its own cultural, social, and institutional strengths. That means entrepreneurship combined with responsibility. Growth combined with values. Technology combined with human judgement.
This does not mean choosing slower growth. It means building the conditions for companies to grow without losing the broader purpose of innovation.
The challenge is not start-ups. The challenge is scale.
Europe is often described as being behind in entrepreneurship, but Prof. Aernoudt challenges that assumption.
As he notes, Europe accounted for 35% of global start-ups over the past decade, compared with 42% in the United States. The gap appears later, when companies need to scale.
Two barriers stand out:
- limited access to growth capital
- a conservative mindset around ownership and expansion
Many European entrepreneurs prefer to keep control rather than accept external investment that could help their companies grow faster. At the same time, institutional capital remains underused. Prof. Aernoudt points out that pension funds allocate less than 0.8% of their assets to venture capital, limiting the financing available for scale-ups.
For Europe to compete globally, capital and mindset need to move together. More companies need access to financing that supports scale, while entrepreneurs need to become more comfortable with growth models that require shared ownership.
Why business angels matter
As the founder of the European Business Angels Network, Prof. Aernoudt has played a direct role in shaping Europe’s early-stage investment ecosystem.
In the conversation, he explains why business angels remain central to start-up financing. They provide not only capital, but also experience, networks, mentoring, and practical judgement. For early-stage companies, this combination can be more valuable than funding alone.
Prof. Aernoudt also highlights the importance of syndication: several angels investing together to support companies that need more capital than one individual investor can provide, but are still too early for traditional venture capital.
This is one of the areas where Europe can build on its own strengths: practical, experienced, relationship-based investment that supports companies beyond the financial transaction.
AI and the risk of outsourced thinking
The conversation also turns to artificial intelligence and its impact on education, work, and society.
Prof. Aernoudt is not against technology. His concern is dependence. Just as GPS has weakened people’s ability to navigate independently, AI can weaken critical thinking if students, professionals, and leaders begin to outsource judgement to machines.
For him, the role of a professor is not to provide ready-made answers. It is to help people think clearly about what knowledge they value, how dependent on technology they are willing to become, and how they want to make decisions.
For executive education, this point is especially relevant. Leaders do not need only faster answers. They need stronger judgement, better questions, and the ability to make decisions in uncertain conditions.
Regulation should enable innovation, not slow it down
Prof. Aernoudt also addresses one of Europe’s recurring obstacles: regulation.
His position is not that Europe should remove regulation altogether. Rather, Europe needs smarter and more stable regulation. Frequent changes create uncertainty and make long-term investment harder. In contrast, more predictable environments give entrepreneurs, investors, and companies a clearer basis for planning.
He is also cautious about subsidies as the default solution. In his view, Europe already has capital. The challenge is to channel it more effectively into start-ups and scale-ups through better financial instruments, including venture capital, business angels, reimbursable loans, and public-private investment structures.
This is where policy, finance, and entrepreneurship need to work together. Innovation requires not only ideas, but also systems that help those ideas grow.
Defence, dual-use technologies, and strategic autonomy
Another important part of the discussion is Europe’s role in defence and dual-use technologies.
Prof. Aernoudt sees this as a critical and underdeveloped area for European start-ups. Europe cannot rely only on external suppliers for technologies that are strategically important. It needs the capacity to develop solutions domestically, especially in areas such as space, defence, research, and advanced technology.
At the same time, he underlines that technology itself is neutral. Its ethical dimension depends on how humans choose to use it. That is why human oversight and responsibility remain central, particularly when AI and military applications are involved.
The zebra economy: a European approach to long-term value
Prof. Aernoudt also discusses the concept of the zebra economy, which he introduced as an alternative to purely short-term, hyper-growth models.
Zebra companies aim to combine profitability with social impact. They are built to create long-term value, contribute to their communities, and remain connected to the environment in which they operate.
For Prof. Aernoudt, this model aligns strongly with European values. It offers a different way to think about entrepreneurship: not only as a race for scale, but as a disciplined effort to build sustainable companies with a clear role in society.
Why this matters for executives
The conversation brings together several questions that are central to today’s executive agenda:
- How can Europe compete without losing its own identity?
- How should leaders work with AI without weakening human judgement?
- What kind of capital does Europe need to support real growth?
- How can companies scale while staying responsible?
- What does entrepreneurship require in a period of uncertainty and geopolitical change?
For BMI Executive Institute, these are not abstract topics. They are directly connected to the leadership, strategy, finance, entrepreneurship, and geopolitical context that senior executives need to understand when making decisions.
Prof. Rudy Aernoudt’s perspective is valuable precisely because it connects policy-level thinking with entrepreneurial practice. It shows that Europe’s future competitiveness will depend not only on technology, but also on capital allocation, education, regulation, leadership judgement, and the courage to build a model that fits Europe’s own strengths.