New venture high growth in high-tech environments

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to understand the triggering factors of new firm growth in high-tech environments (life science, knowledge-intensive business services [KIBS] and engineering) by studying a representative sample of high-growth Italian start-ups. Our empirical research uses the information gathered during direct interviews with managers through a semi-structured questionnaire, which was presented to 382 new Italian firms. Considering the characteristics of new firms, this article summarizes the key growth factors. Investment in acquiring new competencies both in technology and marketing, development of dynamic capabilities (investment in human resources and new routines) and access to external knowledge and information sources emerged as significant.

KEYWORDS:

• Growth
• new ventures
• SMEs
• innovation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Luigi Orsi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7621-0878

Notes

1. We adopt a slightly different periodization for the various sectors. For KIBS and engineering, which are formed by a large firm population, we considered new firms founded between 2004 and 2006, whereas for life-science firms, a sector that has a limited population of firms, we enlarged the selection of firms to six years (firms founded between 2000 and 2006).

2. In particular, we selected the following regions: Veneto, Lombardia, Piemonte, Emilia Romagna, Trentino Alto Adige, Liguria, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Toscana, Umbria, Marche, Lazio and Sardegna.

3. The universe of new firms was selected in the following way: We identified KIBS through ATECO 2007 codes 62, 63.1, 71.11, 71.12, 1.71, 12.2 and 72 and engineering through ATECO 2007 codes 28.4 and 28.9, whereas life-science firms were selected using the Medtrack database, which provides a comprehensive representation of life-science firms within more than 500 Italian companies. The choice of Medtrack is justified by the fact that there is no ATECO code directly attributable to the life-science industry.

4. R is an open-source software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

5. This variable has been excluded by the model for multicollinearity with the variable bank (see Table 2).

6. Our results are in a certain way in contrast to what emerged in the article of Cainelli et al. (2006), which explored the effect of innovation on a large sample of Italian service firms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ateneo di Padova ‘The creation of firms in new competitive environments’ [Grant Number CPDA115589].