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Small Business Economics

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12.04.2018

The role of industry variety in the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy

verfasst von: Roberto Antonietti, Francesca Gambarotto

Erschienen in: Small Business Economics | Ausgabe 2/2020

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Abstract

This paper aims to ascertain whether related and unrelated industry variety affects the creation of innovative as opposed to other start-ups in Italian local labor market areas. The analysis combines elements from the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship, the recombinant growth approach, and evolutionary economic geography. Using data on Italian innovative start-ups created between 2012 and 2015, and on firms newly registered with the Italian Chambers of Commerce, and applying appropriate count data models, our estimates show that innovative start-ups are more frequently created in areas where unrelated variety is higher. This is because innovative start-ups find more opportunities to recombine different pieces of knowledge or maximize their portfolio of demand opportunities, in such a setting, whereas a higher related variety stimulates the creation of other types of new start-up, for which it is easier to combine similar, complementary knowledge sources. We also find that half of the effect of related and unrelated variety comes from the localization of (innovative) start-ups in large urban areas.

Vorheriger Artikel Productive opportunities, uncertainty, and science-based firm emergence

Nächster Artikel From knowledge to business ecosystems: emergence of an entrepreneurial activity during knowledge replication

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A start-up can be defined as innovative when the entrepreneurial talent is used to recombine existing knowledge in innovative ways, especially new technologies, and when it invests in risky activities like R&D and patent production (Acs et al. 2009).

This is particularly true for Italy, which is still suffering from a lengthy period of economic stagnation, with a negative impact on the birth of innovative firms. In 2014, high-growth firms accounted for 6.8% of Italy’s all active enterprises, and for 9.5% of the corresponding employment (the corresponding mean values for the EU are 9.2% and 13%, respectively), and they had 709,769 employees (as opposed to 2,961,954 in the UK, for instance, where high-growth firms account for 12.9% of all active firms and for a 19.3% of the corresponding employment). See: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7706167/4-26102016-AP-EN.pdf/20f0c515-ed43-45c3-ad6a-ca0b26b36de5.

The applicant firm can be a new or already existing company, but few innovative start-ups were born before 2012; the majority were established and registered with the Chambers of Commerce between 2012 and 2015.

The rule is the following: R&D expenditures should be equal at least to 15% of the highest value between the total production cost and the total value of production.

Unfortunately, the information available does not allow for a distinction between the sectors involved, so the analysis focuses on the number of firms newly registered in each LLMA.

The pairwise correlation between the number of innovative start-ups and the number of newly-registered firms is 0.92.

As a robustness test, Eq. (1) was also estimated using the gross number of new start-ups as the dependent variable. The results did not change.

Hurdle negative binomial estimates are not reported due to word count restrictions, but are available upon request.

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Titel: The role of industry variety in the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy
verfasst von: Roberto Antonietti
Francesca Gambarotto
Publikationsdatum: 12.04.2018
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Small Business Economics / Ausgabe 2/2020
Print ISSN: 0921-898X
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0913
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-018-0034-4

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