Evaluating the Role of Incubators in Enhancing Startup Growth: A Comparative Analysis between Startups Accelerated and Not

This thesis aims to study the role of incubators within the startup ecosystem, specifically in the Italian landscape. It investigates incubators’ characteristics and performances by integrating existing literature with empirical research. The descriptive analysis reveals that the majority of incubators are located in Northern Italy and they are on average small organisations, with 80% employing fewer than eight people. Despite their size, the total number of employees in the sector has significantly increased, from 769 to 1953, marking a 254% growth from 2016 to 2022. In addition, each incubator supports on average 35.4 organisations. From the financial point of view, Italian incubators combined registered €527 million in revenue in 2022, a slight decrease from €554 million the previous year, with approximately 27% of this revenue derived from services offered to entrepreneurial organizations. A random effect regression analysis is performed on a panel dataset to further investigate incubators’ impact on their tenants’ performances, by comparing organisations supported and not. The two main dependent variables analysed are tenants’ revenue and debt growth. It resulted that being incubated has a positive impact on both financial metrics, with incubated organisations showing higher revenue growth, particularly those that acquire more debt and increase employment.