The New European Champions project - an initiative by EFER in collaboration with IESE Business School (Barcelona) and the Warsaw School of Economics - aims to identify entrepreneurs who have built innovative growth companies that are born and located in Central & Eastern Europe and Russia and who successfully expanded into international markets. 

We want to honor those entrepreneurs and also initiate a case writing process to develop relevant local entrepreneurship teaching materials and a book, because experience around the world has shown, that entrepreneurship education is most impactful and successful when young people learn from role models that they can identify with. 

Central and Eastern Europe has some great entrepreneurial talent and while a number of people were able to set up remarkable firms, many more of them are needed. Especially those that are willing and able to grow beyond their countries' own national borders and be competitive in an increasingly global world. Entrepreneurship education will play a crucial role in every country's future ability to develop new generations of capable entrepreneurs that are inspired to start new international ventures. 

Selection 

The project has gone through a multi-stage nomination and selection process. Sourcing of potential candidates and companies was made through the EFER alumni network, private, governmental, and academic partners and networks in the entrepreneurship and business ecosystem. This was followed by data exploration from different sources in the different countries.

We have received more than 100 nominations from many highly qualified candidates from: Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. 

Entrepreneurs have been selected by a prestigious selection committee composed of leading figures from the academic and business communities, ensuring a sufficient level of diversity with regard to countries, industries, topics, growth phases, challenges, internationalization strategies, etc.

The selected 25 entrepreneurs were honoured at the Entrepreneurs Gala on 21st July 2011 in Warsaw, Poland

Research Team:

Prof. Julia Prats
Marc Sosna
Dr Piotr Zaborek

Thanks to: