This study analyzes the learning curve in the emergence and development of an entrepreneurship policy in the European Union (EU) during the period 1990–2016 by identifying the key topics in the policy agenda setting and their evolution over time within a corpus of 576 selected policy‐making documents. To this end, the study uses a combination of text mining techniques, cluster analysis, and qualitative assessment, which illustrate the possibilities of these tools to learn about the evolution of the policy cycle in a particular domain. The results from the analysis display three main stages, each of which have two substages. During the initial period, which lasted up until the late 1990s, labelled (i) latent EU entrepreneurship policy, there were hardly any specific entrepreneurship policy initiatives and only some general enterprise‐fostering policies at the EU level which included, tangentially, SMEs and entrepreneurs. In the (ii) emergent EU entrepreneurship policy stage, which can be traced from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, saw the initial steps of an entrepreneurship policy with a main focus on diagnosis of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and some measures of support, mainly to SMEs. The third and last period to date, which began in the 2010s is a (iii) new normal for EU entrepreneurship policy, which is a more targeted stage aimed at promoting not only the quantity but also quality of business ventures. Overall, this study provides a complete overview of the EU entrepreneurship policy evolution and concludes with a granular proposal for its continued development, while identifying main themes and foundational concepts, establishing patterns, and finding temporal and contextual relations within the EU policy cycle.

中文翻译：

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欧盟的创业政策议程：文本挖掘的视角

这项研究通过确定政策议程设置中的关键主题及其在576项精选政策中随时间的演变情况，分析了1990-2016年间欧盟（EU）创业政策的产生和发展中的学习曲线。制作文件。为此，本研究将文本挖掘技术，聚类分析和定性评估相结合，说明了这些工具在特定领域中了解政策周期演变的可能性。分析结果显示出三个主要阶段，每个阶段都有两个子阶段。在最初一直持续到1990年代后期的时期，标记为（i）潜在的欧盟企业家政策，几乎没有任何具体的企业家精神政策举措，只有欧盟一级的一些一般性的企业扶持政策，包括切忌的中小型企业和企业家。在（ii）新兴的欧盟企业家政策阶段（可以追溯到1990年代末至2010年代初），看到了企业家政策的初始步骤，主要侧重于诊断企业家生态系统和一些支持措施，主要是中小企业。从2010年代开始的第三个也是最后一个时期是（iii）欧盟企业家政策的新常态，这是一个更有针对性的阶段，旨在提高企业的数量和质量。总体而言，本研究提供了欧盟企业家政策演变的完整概述，并为继续发展提出了详尽的建议，同时确定了欧盟政策周期内的主要主题和基本概念，建立模式以及寻找时间和背景关系。