BANKS’ PROGRAMS FOR START-UPS: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF POSSIBLE STRATEGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPEAN BANKS WITH THE HELP OF NEW PLAYERS

Banks have historically had scarce interest toward start-ups, resulting in the lack of engagement with them. However the increased competition, caused by new EU regulation combined with the diffusion of digital technologies that during the past decade led to the emergence FinTech start-ups, is somehow urging banks to revise their strategical plans: during last years, more and more initiatives targeting start-ups in which the banks were directly involved were created across all Europe. Considering only banks following a universal business model, the analysis aimed at identifying possible innovation strategies that could be pursued by these organizations according to the start-up programs in which they were involved. Leaving aside Corporate Venture Capital, intrapreneurship programs and the creation of digital innovation units, few researches have been done on the classification of activities oriented to start-ups and possible strategic implications that led banks to create them, especially in terms of the typology of knowledge that could be generated and of dynamic capabilities that could be developed while engaging in different typologies of programs. Framing all the thesis under an innovation management point of view, this work examines which could be possible reasons for banks to intervene in start-up world: considering the typologies of programs in which these financial intermediaries are involved, are they carrying out these initiatives with an interest in re-shaping their business models? Are these institutions morphing from financial intermediary into knowledge intermediary? Answer to these questions have been investigated considering banks operating across the European Union. After having identified relevant banks for this analysis across 27+1 European Union states a thorough research of available programs for start-ups has been done with archival research, identifying about 300 results. For each program a detailed analysis of its main characteristics was performed to identify similarities in services offered to start-ups. An in-depth description of the main characteristics of different typologies of programs is included in the thesis, as also a description of possible strategical benefits and limitations of each of them. Since most of the banks were involved in different start-up programs, clustering algorithm have been implemented to recognize possible patters among different financial institutions; resulting clusters based on program engagement were then commented considering also other qualitative and quantitative data regarding the sponsoring organization. Analysing the involvement in start-up programs of 74 different European financial institutions, with a multiple case-study analysis performed at bank-level applying different clustering algorithms for researching a structure within the dataset, 9 different groups (8 + 1 of banks with no programs) with clearly different strategical objectives emerged. Being engaged in different mix of program imply that different banks are adopting different approaches to developing innovation capabilities and knowledge regarding the markets in which the supported start-ups operate, which could reflect in the underlying development of possible different innovation strategies for rejuvenating the bank ecosystem of products and services, and consequently the financial institution business model.