The Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission, and the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities have recently launched the Better Entrepreneurship Policy Tool, a free online self-assessment and learning tool for inclusive and social entrepreneurship policies and programmes.
With regard to inclusive entrepreneurship policies these are usually targeted to groups under-represented in entrepreneurship, or that face greater barriers to business creation and self-employment, e.g. women, youth, the unemployed and migrants. For each of these four groups there are four versions of the self-assessment tool. Each of these self-assessments includes a selection of good practices against which the user is asked to assess his/her city/region/country. The good practice statements are organized according to the following six modules: strategies, regulations, skills, finance, networks and culture.
The part of the tool related to social entrepreneurship assesses whether current policies and programmes enable and support social enterprises to start-up and scale-up. In this case the assessment includes seven modules: institutions, regulations, finance, markets, skills, impact and culture.
The tool targets policy makers and non-governmental stakeholders active in designing, implementing or advocating for inclusive and social entrepreneurship policies and programmes. The instrument can be used both by individuals or groups that can assess key policy issues in their city, region or country that will be rated on a scale from 0 to 10.
Once the self-assessment has been completed users will be provided with:
i) a framework to reflect on social entrepreneurship policies and programmes in a city, region or country;
ii) policy guidance notes and case studies that can inspire the design of better policies.
More information about the tool is available at this page.
Source: OECD and EC DG for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion
