Analysis of the impact of incubators/accelerators on the Italian entrepreneurial ecosystem

First of all, it is natural to contextualize the period in which this thesis was written. Between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, a period hit by the current pandemic, it was possible to notice how innovation is at the center of the daily debate. The hope of a vaccine, the dominance of e-commerce, smart working, and online thesis discussions a year ago were unthinkable. This thesis deals with the place where innovation comes to life, the Incubators, and is contextualized in the country where my academic career took place, Italy. Thinking about the Incubators, it is natural to imagine the skyscrapers of Silicon Valley where the largest I-tech companies were founded. A Business Incubator is defined as an organization that actively supports the process of creating and developing new innovative businesses through a series of services and resources offered both directly and through a network of partners. Relevant examples of Business Incubators are: Station F in France known for being the largest start-up facility in the world, in Italy the Incubator of the Politecnico di Torino I3P and PoliHub of the Politecnico di Milano. In this discussion the term Incubator will be used to define both Business Incubator and Business Accelerator, only a brief excursus will be made at the beginning of the discussion, since there are no shared and univocal definitions and also because Incubators and accelerators have the same objective and sometimes even some accelerators are Incubators. Recently, Business Incubator has assumed a role of fundamental importance especially following the introduction of growth regulations as per Law Decree no. 179/2012 n. 179 . The growth decree 2.0 of 2012 and the decree of 22 December 2016 of the Ministry of Economic Development define the requirements that an Incubator must have to be part of the special section of the Business Register and obtain the certificate that recognizes them as Incubators. The main objective of this work is the update of the Social Innovation Monitor report (2019) for an evaluation of the results achieved by Italian Incubators in 2019 compared to the previous year. Subsequently, a mapping of the Incubators present on the Italian territory will be proposed. In order to analyse the performance of the Italian start-ups incubated in 2019, the information necessary for the analysis was collected by sending a questionnaire between July and November 2020 to all 212 Italian Incubators, which was followed by a response rate of 40% or 85 Incubators in the sample considered for the analysis. The thesis is structured as follows: Initially, the characteristics of the different types of Business Incubators will be presented, with an in-depth analysis of the services offered and the benefits obtained thanks to them. The analysis of the literature will be followed by a description of the Italian Incubator scene and its evolution over the years. In addition, the methods used for research will be described which include updating the Incubator database and the main steps related to the creation of the questionnaire for data collection. Finally, the research results will be provided complete with analysis of the population of Italian Incubators and incubated start-ups followed by the conclusions in which comments are provided on the results of the analyses, limitations, and future prospects of the analysed sector.