“If you are an entrepreneur, the best thing you can do is move to the US.” This is not the boast of a proud American but the advice one successful German entrepreneur hands out to his compatriots.
I heard this at a recent conference on how to revive growth and jobs in Europe. It is typical of the stories told by frustrated European entrepreneurs. Europe has one of the most skilled workforces on the planet, they say, so why doesn’t it have its own Facebook, Google or Apple?
They complain that regulators and companies have battened down the hatches as waves of technological change sweep in from the west. Europe seems condemned to be disrupted, rather than to disrupt. That may be so, but I wonder whether a European Silicon Valley is really the answer to the continent’s economic problems.