European governments spend around €150 billion every year trying to make their economies more innovative and entrepreneurial, as do many other governments around the world.

Yet the programmes that governments put in place to increase innovation, support high-growth entrepreneurship and accelerate business growth suffer from two weaknesses: there is insufficient innovation in innovation and growth policy and there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of innovation and growth policy

Despite the importance of innovation and high-growth entrepreneurship for economic growth, there are still many open questions on the best approaches to support them. This policy brief looks at the need to experiment with new approaches to innovation policy and, crucially, learn what works.