Qualitative analysis on incubators and accelerators in Italy

The issues related to entrepreneurship, Startups and Incubators1 have today taken on a role of greater interest on the part of government entities, scientists and communities in most countries of the world. Due to the global crisis and the emergence of a single large market, many countries have experienced a deep economic recession in recent years, which has led to an increase in youth and long-term unemployment. As a result of this, one of the most interesting results is that the countries that are best addressing this challenge are those that have developed a strong sense of technological innovation. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the most used metric to evaluate the wealth of a country, does not depend only on the growth of production factors, but also on the growth of productivity, i.e. the economic value created by a unit of production factors. Is estimated that approximately 50% of US annual GDP growth is attributed to increases in innovation. Although almost any company can be innovated, the main difficulty is that already established companies (Incumbent) are strongly tied to the past skills and cannot rapidly evolve towards new markets or industries. Other actors, on the other hand, face less difficulty in innovating, especially thanks to the opportunity and willingness to innovate of the founders that have the potential to feed economic development, create innovations and provide job opportunities (Bollingtoft, 2012). They are called Startups, temporary organizations designed to seek a repeatable and scalable business model. Incubators are a type of institution that works with the aim of assisting the development of startups and play a crucial role in business support activities, providing various services, from space to training and human capital support (Aernoudt, 2004; Grimaldi and Grandi, 2005), to help entrepreneurs along the company's growth path, in order to encourage innovation, social and economic growth. They analyze organizations’ business plans and ideas not yet consolidated as productive activities, select companies with high growth potential, cultivating them for a medium-long period in order to ensure success. It has been shown that the support of these identities is nowadays a tool used to promote innovation and contain this failure rate of startups and increase their chances of success, demonstrating flexibility in adapting to the evolution of markets and changes in the business world. (Rice and Matthews, 1995). This study is carried out as part of the research work on the impact of Italian incubators by the Social Innovation Monitor (SIM), a team coordinated by Professor Paolo Landoni of the Politecnico di Torino and composed by researchers and professors of several universities which are interested in innovation and entrepreneurship with significant social and or environmental impact.