The Creation of High-Tech Entrepreneurial Ventures at the Local Level: The Role of Local Competences and Communication Infrastructures

Abstract

This paper sheds light on the role of human capital for the creation of New Technology-Based Firms (NTBFs) in a geographical area. We relate NTBF creation to the local availability of human capital (local competences) and to the local accessibility of distant competences through communication infrastructures. We argue that local competences and communication infrastructures have a differential impact on NTBF creation in manufacturing and service industries due to the diverse productive characteristics of the sectors. In particular, we claim that local competences have a more positive effect on manufacturing, whereas communication infrastructures affect services more. Findings from the estimations of econometric models on the Italian provinces are in line with these predictions. The moderating effects of local economic and technological development on the inquired relationships are also considered. Whereas economic development seems to weaken the effect of local competences in manufacturing and reinforce that of communication infrastructures in services, technological development has no moderating effects.

Keywords:

• NTBF creation
• human capital
• competences
• infrastructures

Acknowledgements

Financial support from UniCredit SPA is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are indebted to two anonymous referees, Massimo G. Colombo, Keld Laursen, and the participants in the DIME, AiIG 2010, EARIE 2010 and EPI 2010 conferences for useful comments and suggestions on this and related works. The authors warmly thank Keld Laursen, Francesca Masciarelli and Toke Reichstein for their kindness in providing the measure of social capital they developed.

Notes

¹ Note that the list of high-tech industries does not include telecommunication services. This is a regulated sector where the creation of firms is shaped by specific drivers. Indeed, in Italy, the creation of new telecommunication operators is conditional on obtaining a licence granted by the Communication Regulatory Authority (AGCOM). Given this peculiarity, we decided to exclude this industry from the analysis to avoid possible biases in the study of the drivers of purely genuine NTBF creation dynamics.

² Unfortunately, data constraints prevented us from creating these two control variables at a more fine-grained level.

³ Here, NTBF “exit” includes voluntary closure, liquidation and bankruptcy, but it also includes the loss of identity after merging with or being absorbed by other firms.

⁴ The indicators considered in the sum are the following: (i) the number of licences granted for telephone services, (ii) the number of licences granted for Internet services, (iii) the number of licences granted for data transfer services, (iv) the number of other licences, (v) the number of telephone subscribers in the business market, (vi) the number of telephone subscribers in the residential market. The base-year for the computation of the indicators is 2000.

⁵ We used the most general specification for the spatial weight matrix, that of the geographical distance between the centroids of provinces i and j (km).