Italian incubated startups and CDP accelerators: an exploratory analysis of the current scenario

The present thesis focuses on the entrepreneurial sector in Italy, specifically examining the activities of incubators and accelerators. It begins by discussing the state of the art of the entrepreneurial sector, providing an overview of incubators and their historical context, definitions, diffusion in the USA and Europe, services provided, costs, revenues, and categorization. The categorization mainly includes corporate, university, and social incubators. The literature review also covers related topics such as technology incubators, academic entrepreneurship and spin-offs, corporate social responsibility, and open innovation. The section also highlights the benefits of incubation activities. The thesis then focuses on accelerators, another type of entrepreneurial organization. It explores the definitions, historical context, services, resources, development, business model, value proposition, and benefits of accelerators. It specifically focuses on corporate accelerators, which are the most common form. The section concludes by comparing incubators and accelerators, drawing insights from experts in the field. To provide context, the thesis presents the history of entrepreneurship activities in Italy, along with the introduction of the Social Innovation Monitor (SIM) and the role of CDP (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti) and its subsidiary CDP Venture Capital SGR in supporting entrepreneurial initiatives. The methodology section explains the research approach, highlighting the external database (AIDA), the survey administered to incubators, data preparation for generating the startup list, the population of accelerators, and data analysis. The analysis section presents the findings related to incubated startups and CDP accelerators. It provides insights into the geographical distribution, legal form, foundation year, ATECO sectors, number of employees, and financial metrics of incubated startups. For CDP accelerators, it focuses on the distribution of total funding per sector, social impact, geographical distribution, establishment year, program duration, and the number of startups accelerated. Finally, the thesis concludes by summarizing the results obtained from analyzing incubated startups and CDP accelerators separately. It discusses the implications of the findings, acknowledges the limitations of the research, and suggests opportunities for further exploration in the field.