Improvement of Methodologies and Governance of European Entrepreneurship Network
Business creation generates both growth and employment.  Therefore, encouraging people to become entrepreneurs is a strategic goal to exploit the endogenous potential of territories and to maintain the competitiveness of EU regions. Start-up support policies are also an innovative marketing tool for EU territories because they increase their attractiveness, .

Many EU regions have implemented policies which aim at increasing the number of new companies but also at improving the quality and sustainability of those companies (average survival rates in the main EU regions is about 60% 3 years after creation). Pre-start and post-start support has an impact on sustainibility but with an increasing number of would-be entrepreneurs and limited public resources, we have to maximise their efficiency. 
Some regions have also fostered networking between those involved in the business creation process.
Implementing such networks and governance models enables technical issues and best practice to be shared, relative contribution to successful start up to be evaluated and improves the visibility of support services.

The key objective of IMAGEEN is to benchmark best practice governance models and support methodologies. We will publish an Entrepreneurship Management Guide describing those best practices, analysing how they can be best transfered, and making recommendations to policy makers to improve the efficiency of entrepreneurship policy both locally and at the EU level.
This will be disseminated to all local stakeholders and policy makers but also on a European level at a large-scale EU dissemination event.
The IMAGEEN project will benefit from a large audience to disseminate its results and outputs since the project is supported by local policy makers and by ECER (European Cities Entrepreneurship Ranking) which each year organizes meetings for the TOP 40
Entrepreneurship Cities in Europe, within the EUROCITIES network.
Throughout the project, study visits will be organized to enable us to understand and describe precisely local practice in terms of governance (networking, monitoring systems) and support methodologies. Good practice and local issues will be highlighted.
This work will progressively enable us to build our Guide.

IMAGEEN partners will test out the transfer of best practice in their territories. An innovative entrepreneurship monitoring system will be jointly tested. One expected output of IMAGEEN is a common entrepreneurship barometer (10 permanent common indicators giving a global picture and enabling comparisons between EU Regions).

IMAGEEN will build an EU-wide network dedicated to the improvement of entrepreneurship policies and tools. One expected output of IMAGEEN is a concrete network methodology to enable IMAGEEN partner network sustainability and bring in new EU partners.