Incubation activities in Emilia-Romagna: Analysis of a regional entrepreneurial ecosystem

Innovation is seen to be the primary factor in an economy's ability to generate significant wealth, and therefore it is crucial to encourage the growth of innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems. According to the ecosystem model, entrepreneurship grows and occurs within a community with a variety of participants who share knowledge with one another to generate new value. It is inside the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem that incubators and accelerators find their ‘raison d'être’. The existence and operation of an incubator, along with the network of business angels, encourage the growth of entrepreneurial activities. Incubators can be considered as facilities that provide emerging enterprises with pooled resources including office space, consultants, and personnel. They could also give customers access to funding and technical assistance. These services provide start-up companies with a more secure environment in which to develop before they are able to support themselves. To track the key characteristics and accomplishments of incubators, the Social Innovation Monitor (SIM), a group of academics led by professor Landoni of the "Politecnico di Torino", began examining the incubation phenomena in Italy in 2017. In Emilia-Romagna, ART-ER (Attrattività Ricerca Territorio), a regional consortium corporation, operates with the goal of advancing the region's sustainable growth with the promotion of innovation, knowledge, and attractiveness of the territorial framework. The main objective of this thesis is to continue and update the research done in 2019 from the collaboration between the Social Innovation Monitor and ART-ER, which examined and mapped the organizations supporting entrepreneurship in Emilia-Romagna in 2018. This thesis also aimed to provide a better understanding of the incubation landscape in Emilia-Romagna by communicating knowledge of the demographic features and the performances of incubators and incubated start-ups with reference to the year 2021. Parallel to the research, several differential analyses have been carried out comparing the outcomes to the case in 2019. These analyses gave important insights into how the industry has evolved throughout this time. Several studies were also conducted to understand the environmental differences between Emilia-Romagna and the other remaining Italian regions. This paperwork is divided into three sections. In the first chapter, the literature review is presented. Starting from the definition of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the role of incubators is defined. The latter are analyzed in detail, according to the different existing definitions and taxonomies. Finally, there is a section that focuses on incubators and accelerators in Italy and Emilia-Romagna, introducing in this way what will be the focus of the work. The second chapter, which is the methodology, details the technique used to prepare and perform the analysis; whereas the third chapter shows the analytical insight itself, presents the data and graphs that were discovered during the study, and provides commentary on them. The last chapter will include conclusions, summarizing the analysis's findings and stressing the study's limitations as well as the potential for more research in the area.