Who - Future 500 Initiative

FUTURE 500 INITIATIVE

Who We Are

Future 500 brings together policymakers, investors, founders, and ecosystem builders committed to strengthening Europe’s scale-up architecture.

THE MISSION

A pan-European platform built on collaboration

Europe continues to generate innovation at scale – yet struggles to scale innovation into global companies. The gap is not funding volume. It is selection quality, timing, and cross-ecosystem coordination.

Future 500 is designed as a long-term complement to existing EU instruments – filling the gap in structured, comparable, and repeatable early identification of scale-up potential.

We operate at the intersection of policy, capital, and industry – convening the actors who can turn structural challenges into systematic solutions.

Founder

Stjepan Orešković

Founder & Majority Shareholder, BOSQAR d.d.
President of Supervisory Board, IEDC

Stjepan Orešković founded the Future 500 Initiative to address a structural gap in Europe’s innovation economy – the failure to systematically scale promising companies into global champions.

As President of the Supervisory Board at IEDC – Bled School of Management and Founder of BOSQAR Invest, he brings together institutional depth, entrepreneurial experience, and a long-term commitment to European competitiveness.

“Europe stands at a crossroads. Rich in talent and ideas, but slow to scale them globally. Future 500 is our answer to that.”

INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS

Built on institutional depth

IEDC – Bled School of Management

IEDC provides the intellectual and institutional foundation of the initiative, overseeing methodology and scale-up assessment criteria. As lead institution, it anchors the research consortium and the Future 500 Index.

Atlantic Council

The Atlantic Council, including its SEEUS (Southeast Europe United for Success) initiative, contributes a transatlantic and geopolitical perspective — connecting the Future 500 mission to broader Euro-Atlantic competitiveness priorities.

Bled Strategic Forum (BSF)

The Bled Strategic Forum provides the convening platform for Future 500’s flagship annual forum, hosting leaders from across Europe and beyond in one of the continent’s most respected high-level policy environments.

WATCH

Future 500 in motion

HOW WE LAUNCHED

September 1, 2025 Bled, Slovenia

The Future 500 initiative was publicly launched at the Bled Strategic Forum on September 1, 2025. The closed, leadership-level forum brought together EU Commissioner Jozef Síkela, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, senior investors, founders, and institutional leaders.

The event established the platform’s methodology, set the agenda for the Future 500 Index, and signalled Europe’s intent to build a long-term, structured response to the scale-up gap.