Society is increasingly moving towards an “entrepreneurial economy” in which entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship play an increasingly important role. At the same time, the new gene-ration of entrepreneurs may have different requirements or expectations about entrepreneurship and about financing than has been more common so far. Typically, among other things, young entrepreneurs may be more willing to use alternative forms of financing. At the same time, entrepreneurship in the future will also require new/different skills. For example, entrepreneurs must be able to respond increasingly quickly to changing and dyna-mic (market) conditions. Many of these entrepreneurs work in small, start-up companies and grow towards an SME. The Dutch SME market consists of several hundred thousand compa-nies with more than one person employed (i.e., including entrepreneur). These companies play an important role in the Dutch economy in terms of employment, added value and exports. The government is therefore keen to nurture this group of companies and support them where necessary, for example in internationalization and innovation. Dialogic conducts research on various themes within entrepreneurship and SMEs (also for the Flemish SME policy):

• Evaluation of SME and entrepreneurship policy
  The Dutch government has a wide range of instruments and agencies to help entrepreneurs scale up, finance and innovate. Dialogic regularly conducts evaluations of these initiatives (including the Seed Capital scheme, the Growth Facility, the GO scheme, PMV Flanders and the BMKB scheme).
• Monitoring entrepreneurship and SMEs
  Dialogic helps governments develop indicators that provide insight into various aspects of SMEs and entrepreneurship. This support consists of both setting up a monitoring system (e.g. for the purpose of the SME action plan), the measurement itself and reporting on this in, for example, online dashboards.
• Policy support and advice
  Governments need insight into social and economic developments that may affect entrepre-neurship and SME policy and knowledge questions that may arise from them. Dialogic regularly assists governments in this (strategic) exploring. Examples include an exploration of (future) developments in the SME financing market and an inventory of new knowledge questions regarding SMEs and entrepreneurship, for example in the areas of diversity and human capital.