The influence of the technological regime on the performance of Italian innovative start-ups

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurship scholars interested in the performance of innovative start-ups mainly focus on the internal factors related to innovation processes. In the present paper, the research perspective used to study the performance of innovative start-ups is broadened by also considering the influence of the context – more specifically, the technological regime, defined as the state of the art of the technological environment resulting from technological changes/upgrades. Thus, the objective of this study is to investigate if and to what extent the technological regime can affect the performance of innovative start-ups. Statistical elaborations for about 11,760 Italian innovative start-ups (data are retrieved from the Italian Ministry of Economic Development website and are current up to January 2021) are carried out through the estimation of a stochastic frontier analysis: a parametric model. This methodology identifies the causes of inefficiency and disentangles random from technical inefficiency of the model. The results reveal that the technological regime affects performance but, unexpectedly, does not boost the impact of internal factors (related to innovation processes) on performance. The main conclusion is that internal innovation-related factors and the technological regime do not benefit each other when innovation processes are managed in innovative start-ups.

KEYWORDS:

• Innovative start-ups
• technological regime
• digital transformation index
• performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in two repositories (without DOI) managed by Italian Ministry Economic Development – MISE and Il Sole 24 ore (an economic newspapers). Respectively, these data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: http://startup.registroimprese.it/isin/static/startup/index.html?slideJump=32 and https://lab24.ilsole24ore.com/qualita-della-vita/.

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Diego Matricano

Diego Matricano, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Management at the Department of Management of the Università degli Studi della Campania ‘L. Vanvitelli’, Capua, Italy, where he teaches ‘Strategies for International Markets’ and ‘Open Innovation and Digital Economy’. While a doctoral candidate, he studied at the Jönköping International Business School, Sweden, and he was a visiting scholar at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where he also participated in a research project at the Sol. C. Snider Entrepreneurship Research Center directed by Prof. Ian MacMillan. His research focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation, start-ups and technology transfer. His articles, dealing principally with entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial opportunities, SMEs and innovation networks, have appeared in distinguished scientific journals. He has authored monographs with national (Italian) publishing houses and chapter contributions published by international editors (the most recent publications are listed below). He is an experienced track chair at European Academy of Management (EURAM) where he manages with other colleagues the track ‘Entrepreneurial Processes’ and Euromed Academy of Business (EMAB) annual international conferences, and presenter at World Open Innovation Conference (WOIC), Sinergie–SIMA, and AIDEA (Italian Academy of Business Administration) annual conferences.