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Problem with these grant proposal things is that it favors established businesses over small founders. Establishes businesses have much more resources to go thr

Problem with these grant proposal things is that it favors established businesses over small founders. Establishes businesses have much more resources to go through all the legal / red tape issues. I’ve seen this in practice with innovation subsidies: small startup has to spend a lot of time to go though all the hoops, taking up significant resources, to get modest compensation for actual innovative work. Larger business hires an external agency to do everything for them, to make silly proposals “convert website from jquery to react” as innovation, and gets thousands upon thousands of FTE-hours in subsidy compensation hours for it.

jkukul 1y ago
this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections. The EU is also great at creating a heavy regulatory environment. Which entrenches existing incumbents. So the EU creates barriers that favor big companies, then tries to fix it with grants that... also favor big companies. And then everyone's surprised that there's no innovation in Europe. From all the world's companies worth over 100B$ there's only one European company - SAP, founded 50 years ago. [1] [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/06/05/once-a-corporate-heavyweight-europe-is-now-an-also-ran-can-it-recover-its-footing https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/06/05/once-a-corpora...
- jack_tripper 1y ago
  >this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections. This x2. A close friend of mine works at a major EU HW tech company and his job is wearing a suit, going to dinner parties and rubbing shoulders with high level local and national bureaucrats to convince them to fund X, Y, Z projects, none of which result in any major commercial success or ROI for the governments because the money they get is not enough to make new successful products, but hey, he's loving his job which gives him amazing job security against the waves of layoffs the company went through due to falling of sales, plus the networking he gets out of that is invaluable. So at least some people are enjoying the gravy train while it lasts. But that's why a lot of EU tech companies immediately go to the US first before opening up to the EU market. US VSs are more generous with their cheque books than EU governments and investors, plus the 300 million people single consumer market speaking English as the common language and all that.
- ragazzina 1y ago
  >From all the world's companies worth over 100B$ there's only one European company - SAP Would you rather have an economy of SAPs or an economy of Teslas?
  - _bent 1y ago
    I'd rather have no economy at all
- wasmitnetzen 1y ago
  Sounds like it does not favour mega-corporations at least then? That sounds like a desirable outcome to me.
- palata 1y ago
  I have seen a lot of successful European startups over the years. They just get bought by the US eventually. In part probably because it's harder to become a monopoly in the EU.
richardw 1y ago
I left a research org because it was basically a professional gatherer and spender of grants. People would make some proposal with a consortium, spend the money, write a paper or two, visit a conference in eg Japan to present it, rinse and repeat. Hated that. Nothing to do with real innovation.

jkukul 1y ago

this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections. The EU is also great at creating a heavy regulatory environment. Which entrenches existing incumbents. So the EU creates barriers that favor big companies, then tries to fix it with grants that... also favor big companies. And then everyone's surprised that there's no innovation in Europe. From all the world's companies worth over 100B$ there's only one European company - SAP, founded 50 years ago. [1] [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/06/05/once-a-corporate-heavyweight-europe-is-now-an-also-ran-can-it-recover-its-footing https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/06/05/once-a-corpora...

jack_tripper 1y ago
>this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections. This x2. A close friend of mine works at a major EU HW tech company and his job is wearing a suit, going to dinner parties and rubbing shoulders with high level local and national bureaucrats to convince them to fund X, Y, Z projects, none of which result in any major commercial success or ROI for the governments because the money they get is not enough to make new successful products, but hey, he's loving his job which gives him amazing job security against the waves of layoffs the company went through due to falling of sales, plus the networking he gets out of that is invaluable. So at least some people are enjoying the gravy train while it lasts. But that's why a lot of EU tech companies immediately go to the US first before opening up to the EU market. US VSs are more generous with their cheque books than EU governments and investors, plus the 300 million people single consumer market speaking English as the common language and all that.
ragazzina 1y ago
>From all the world's companies worth over 100B$ there's only one European company - SAP Would you rather have an economy of SAPs or an economy of Teslas?
- _bent 1y ago
  I'd rather have no economy at all
wasmitnetzen 1y ago
Sounds like it does not favour mega-corporations at least then? That sounds like a desirable outcome to me.
palata 1y ago
I have seen a lot of successful European startups over the years. They just get bought by the US eventually. In part probably because it's harder to become a monopoly in the EU.

richardw 1y ago

I left a research org because it was basically a professional gatherer and spender of grants. People would make some proposal with a consortium, spend the money, write a paper or two, visit a conference in eg Japan to present it, rinse and repeat. Hated that. Nothing to do with real innovation.