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Guidance supporting Europe’s aspiring entrepreneurs
Policy and practice to harness future potential

For these reasons, online business guidance and support tools should be
seen as complementary to other mainstream provisions, though their role might
continue to grow in years to come as young people are increasingly operating in
the ‘online’ sphere; their work, studies and even their free time is centred around
the internet and its services. As shown by the face-to-face mentoring case
studies, there are many experienced entrepreneurs who are willing to volunteer
their time, free of charge, to support their less experienced ‘peers’. It is important
that this voluntary resource is used, whether it is for online or face-to-face
support purposes.
The media have a relatively strong influence on attitudes towards things that
listeners do not know well from direct life (European Commission, 2007), but they
media are more likely to reinforce existing attitudes than to change them. Their
main contribution to entrepreneurship is perhaps encouraging people who are
considering setting up a business that it is feasible.
Both European and Member State policies increasingly emphasise the
importance of providing targeted and tailored entrepreneurship support and
guidance to women. Courses teaching entrepreneurship skills to women and
internet resources and databases of support services seem to be quite widely
available in Europe. It seems, however, that the kind of face-to-face, customer-
focused and relational support that women would prefer, such as centres that
provide women-specific entrepreneurship advice and mentoring schemes, are
scarcer. Many national agencies exist for women entrepreneurs but they do not
necessarily have sufficient regional/local (‘grass-root’ level) presence to reach to
women all over the country and from all walks of life. Mentoring schemes are
seen by some as challenging and/or expensive to set up.
Some question the understanding of the policy-makers of the women’s
enterprise agenda and, in particular, whether the critical role of all-encompassing,
women-friendly support is sufficiently understood and how it should sit alongside
mainstream provision in inspiring and supporting women’s enterprise.

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