Entrepreneurship skills: Success in enterprise creation is underpinned by a comprehensive set of skills and competencies among entrepreneurs, including strategic skills, small business management skills and entrepreneurial traits. Entrepreneurship training is a rapidly developing policy field with strong potential for learning from other areas, but it is important to focus on the real needs of entrepreneurs, which extend well beyond traditional business planning and accounting skills.

SME workforce skills: Skills upgrading is also crucial for existing SMEs, where workers have more limited access to training than those in large firms, which reduces enterprise productivity, innovation and competitiveness. Skills development is even more important in social enterprises, where social goals are twinned with profit goals and where people are not always familiar with business management principles. 

Business support framework: The right business support infrastructure endowment, including the presence of incubators, hubs, and science parks, and a diversified set of business development services are important for effective public entrepreneurship support. However, business support is often unnecessarily fragmented, leading to lack of visibility and difficulties in reaching enterprises and lack of co-ordination and synergies. This can be addressed with appropriate policy structures.

Finance: Working capital and investment finance is critical to the creation, survival and growth of enterprises, whether they are in the private or social economy sectors. A wide range of financing options is available, tailored to different needs by company type, sector, stage of growth and finance portfolio.  Arbitrage is insufficient, however, and finance markets are often insufficiently developed at local level. Effective policy needs to overcome obstacles in all of these areas. 

Knowledge networks: In an economy increasingly characterised by open innovation methods, the performance of new firm start ups and SMEs is often boosted by market and technological ideas provided by other companies and organisations in their wider networks and supply chains. There is often a major networking gap, however, between knowledge sources in universities and research organisations and industry exploitation in new spin-off enterprises and SMEs.

Collection of data and diagnostic - A local working group, established by Unioncamere Lombardia, provided relevant background information and documents and assisted OECD experts in the collection and systematisation of information and data.

An international peer review visit - To validate and deepen the self-assessment, to contrast local experiences with other countries and to develop policy options.

A final report - Drawing on the results of the peer review exercise.