Policies for Promoting Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurial Experience as Decision Criteria

European Union countries are dedicated to developing policies to support entrepreneurship. Starting business is not considered to be an exclusive definition of entrepreneurship concept and transferring of business is equally adopted (Calogirou et al., 2010). Simultaneously along with the promotion of business starting process, there is raising awareness that promotion of business transfer is equally important since buying an existing company is an alternative way of starting a business. Scholars emphasise benefits of supporting entrepreneurs that more frequently play the role of seller in this process – experienced entrepreneurs, in literature known as serial (Westhead et al. 2005 a ; 2005b ; Sarasvathy et al. (2013) and parallel entrepreneurs (Ucbasaran et al., 2008) as more active and more aggressive participant, viewed in the context of the entrepreneurship promotion. Scholars so far have been primarily based on different foundations – different approaches in defining the entrepreneurial experience. Entrepreneurial experience has been recognized as an important factor that impacts different aspects of the entrepreneurial activity, but among authors, there are significant differences in the concept definition, coverage and valuation of entrepreneurial experience. This paper reviews recent literature regarding entrepreneurial promotion policies and gives the answer to a research question: is there a difference of the policy shaping regardless to differences in defining of entrepreneurial experience concept and, along with that, are there different evaluation processes for different entrepreneurial promotion policies? The result of this paper is described and analyzed variation in defining and scope in term of entrepreneurial experience and examination of the impact of those concepts on the entrepreneurial experience valuation process. This paper provides a synthesis of the main findings and the recommendations for new entrepreneurial promotion policies based on the entrepreneurial experience.