European Union Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes, charged with delivering the digital agenda for 650m Europeans, built on an initial meeting of Young Advisors in April 2011, with a group of entrepreneurs and business people from across the continent outlining the key actionable areas they saw as helping business thrive. And once more, NoTosh was in the thick of it.

The leaning away from talkshop and into seeing what this group of entrepreneurs could help make happen added ever more increased sense of urgency. We covered vast ground once more, and once more the Commission’s capacity to explain these critical issues of digital inclusion, education and entrepreneurial support in plain, simple, appealing language came to the fore. Commissioner Kroes has updated her own blog with many of the ideas that stemmed from the discussions we led.

By the end of the day, there were several actions that remained strong in my mind:

1. You said we did
   On many of the school rebuild projects I’ve been on, the construction firm will show that they are learning from the client’s feedback with a board, outlining what the client asked for, and what they firm did about it. A similar “You said we did” wall would help meetings like this, and consultations with the public and with industry, to pick up from the last interaction they had together, rather than recapping old ground unnecessarily.
2. Kill the project
   What would happen in terms of entrepreneurial success in Europe if the significant ‘spend’ of the EU on projects was instead ‘invested’ in funding potential businesses? I’d like to see that mindshift, with demonstrable changes in the way that calls to action for funding are marketed: they should be marketed to entrepreneurs in the same way the great incubators and accelerators do.
3. Insist on entrepreneurs advisors in project teams
   Entrepreneurs do not stand on an equal footing to academia in the funding of European projects, particularly in R&D. What would happen if entrepreneurial skills were valued on an equal basis to where academia stand currently, to increase chances of a) finding better projects and b) increasing the chances of their sustainability and survival at project end date?
4. Insist on PR/sharing to begin on projects from day one
   Portal pages are not enough. We need learning logs, regularly updated with the goings on of funded projects, every week, so that similar projects can find each other and avoid duplication, and so that business outside the funding model can look in and potentially partner up at a later date to commercialise what has been discoved. These activities, though, also have a somewhat PR role: they should make it clear what is in the project for a particular european-wide set of citizens.
5. Create a clear language simple English policy on all research
   Tag research and make it highly searchable for startups who could make ideas viable products and services.
6. Make curating action through projects an EU mission
   The curatorial power of the EU is immense – if only it were harnessed to the maximum. One might consider doing more smaller pieces, but joining them up so much better to realise the economies of scale that we should be.
7. Provide incentives for enterprise and public authorities with empty space to open it to Startups and other businesses
   Offer profile, attraction of euro talent or hard cash tax benefits to Local Authorities who give up space that’s not being used anyway. No startup should be investing half its cash in rent. It should be investing in finding the best talent to make their idea a reality.
8. Insist on high minimum standard for all new home builds to include 30mbps connections
   It’s unacceptable that new properties are not plumbed in to a network that will match the homeworking needs of 2020.