The Heterogeneity of the Development Process of New Technology-Based Firms. Implication for Innovation Policies

This work investigates the policy implications of the variety of development processes of start-up firms in a regional setting. The existing literature on entrepreneurship lacks accurate analysis of the processes that lead an idea of business to become an established firm. The present paper moves one step towards filling this gap by investigating the evolution process of a self-contained population of 80 new technology-based firms in the North Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. By clustering the firms in similar organisational configurations at three different points in time, the results show that it is possible to observe that firms develop along different, sometimes overlapping, paths. Our findings point to the need of entrepreneurship policies to be directed towards the creation of an environment that allows firms to be created and develop, instead of focusing on singular, and therefore, limited aspects of such processes.