4. Private-sector financing of innovation

The private sector provides a range of financing instruments, most often designed to provide financial resources when an innovation is launched on the market. We won't go into detail on most of these instruments, which are mainly used to finance business start-ups.

• Venture capital

  Venture capital [AG 471] involves professional investors taking temporary minority stakes in the capital of start-up or spin-off companies. A start-up is a young company with high growth potential, which is usually the subject of a fund-raising...