The Defiant Ones

Europe has concluded that it must work harder to recognize and nurture growth businesses, and what that means to you.

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Looking for more about European entrepreneurship? Read Jerry Useem's "Some Thoughts On Europe" and "The New Aristocracy".

For years Europe's toughest company builders succeeded despitea hostile environment. Now, as they gain social and economicinfluence, they're uniting behind a powerful agenda that could changeyour company's future. Here's how

By now Ruth Foreman ought to know what to expect when she getstogether with a group of fellow company builders: a few usefulmanagement tips, loud grumbling about taxes and other governmentintrusions, and fierce competition in the category of who has enduredthe worst employee ever. Yet Foreman becomes nearly breathless at thememory of a day spent just that way. "I found it really worthwhile totalk to people who were equally excited about what they were doing,"she says. "It really motivated me."

Maybe Foreman, who runs a temporary-employment agency with some250 employees and nearly $5 million in revenues , just ought todrag herself out more. After all, the days of the lonesome-cowpokeentrepreneur went the way of the chuck wagon ages ago. Name anyentrepreneurial phenomenon, and there's probably a networking groupthat serves it, from the young chief executive to the female companybuilder, to those who are growing fast or franchising or strugglingto work and live with their families. And it's happening inany industry you can think of, in every region of the country.

This country, that is.

But Foreman's business, Australasian Temps Ltd., happens to bebased in London. And the conference she attended in mid-November wasthe first of its kind: a groundbreaking effort to identify andassemble the heads of Europe's 500 fastest-growing businesses. Butaren't such companies routinely celebrated -- or at leastacknowledged -- for their much-needed contributions to job creation?Hardly. "No one has ever approached us and said, 'Wow, it looks likeyou are growing,' " admits Foreman, who is the company's managingdirector. "There's been absolutely none of that."

Foreman and her newfound networkers aren't likely to be battingaway ticker tape as they stroll down the Champs Elyséesanytime soon. Still, a growing group of advocates -- frompolicymakers to academics to investors -- have begun to conclude thatthe Continent must work harder to recognize and nurture growthbusinesses. The reason? Think back to 1985, when Ronald Reaganushered in what he dubbed "The Age of the Entrepreneur" in theStates. His nascent hospitality arose from old-fashioned economicnecessity: the Fortune 500's shedding of jobs, the need topare down government, the threat of bloody global competition.

Margaret Thatcher, herself a shopkeeper's daughter, may have beenthe first to import the Gipper's playbook during the 1980s -- easingthe tax burden on small companies, among other initiatives -- asEngland endured convulsive job losses in such heavy-industry staplesas shipbuilding and coal mining. Her efforts help explain whyU.K.-based companies earned 59 spots on the list of Europe's 500 fastgrowers, almost as many as economic powerhouse Germany. But now,especially as governments across Europe brave the belt-tighteningnecessary for them to form a fiscally sound union come 1999, "theyare suddenly starting to figure out that their big companies aredoing no better than ours, and they don't have an engine underneathto pick up the slack," says David Birch, president of Cognetics Inc.,an economic-research company based in Cambridge, Mass. Still, Birch,who attended the conference, cautions that the kind of culturalimpediments that stifle entrepreneurship -- aversion to risk, fear ofembarrassment -- don't fade fast. "Attitude and culture can takegenerations to change, if they ever change at all," he warns.

There's no point in telling that to the freshly minted CEOs ofEurope's 500, who gathered in a former monastery in the rainy town ofGhent, Belgium, last fall. Though meeting for the first time, theydisplayed a shared mind-set that transcends international borders: arelentless focus on getting things done. Never mind which country ishome to the most risk-averse bankers (it's an argument thatcould, and did, go on all day), the fact is, this group of fastgrowers was no more likely to dwell on such hindrances than theirU.S. counterparts would. "People see hurdles where there aren't any,"gushes Ole Flensted, CEO of Ole Flensted Holdings, aDenmark-based food processor. "You can start a business if you havethe energy or the money or a good idea."

Indeed, Bert Twaalfhoven, founder of the European Foundation forEntrepreneurship Research (EFER), the Brussels-based group thatignited the effort to compile Europe's 500, points out that evenEastern Europe, where a rather imposing cultural barrier called theBerlin Wall came down only in 1989, has spawned an astounding 12million entrepreneurs. "They came out of the woodwork," saysTwaalfhoven, who founded EFER in 1987. "They knew thestate enterprises did not have the answer." Oddly enough, the veryimprobability of those ventures, he adds, galvanized Western Europeinto realizing how deficient it was in entrepreneurship.

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