Exploring the Role of Italian Business Angels Networks and Groups: an Analysis of Their Impact

The goal of this work is to present a specific focus on one of the main players in the innovation ecosystem: the Business Angels and their organizations. At general level, the thesis will address the main trends and characteristics of Business Angels, who in addition to financial support also want to provide more practical help to improve the companies they invest in and so be an active part of them. Specifically, it is intend to further study the organizational and investment structures in which they operate, such as BANs (Business Angel Networks) and BAGs (Business Angel Groups). Therefore, after a mention of the innovation context, several issues addressed in academic studies over the past decades will be examined to bring out the peculiarities in the emergence of Business Angel organizations. In describing the methodology conducted and the different phases faced in data collection, the descriptive analyses carried out will then be illustrated, seeking to compare them with what has been highlighted in the literature; this will be done in order to understand how close the research comes to the studies conducted and how much can actually be proposed with respect to these investors categories. To achieve this, the thesis will refer to the recent (2022) Report presented by Social Innovation Monitor (SIM) on the Italian Business Angels, which includes comprehensive surveys and analyses on their impact. To conclude, suggestions for possible other research purposes will be made and observations on the work done will be reported.