Entrepreneurs start up new ventures. New ventures and small to medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) are very important to all economies. They often provide new
employment opportunities within regional economies where there may be few large
businesses. Typically they start up innovative enterprises, identifying opportunities
that larger businesses may have missed or are not interested in. For example, they
represent up to 99 per cent of the 23 million enterprises in the EU and in the USA, they
generated approximately 64 per cent of all new jobs between 1993 and 2008.