Finanziamento e performance delle nuove iniziative imprenditoriali : il caso degli spin-off di ricerca

The innovative capacity of a nation has always represented a key factor to economic development and becomes a critical issue during crises, when it can be used to redirect industrial policies and face competitive forces of low value added productions coming from emerging countries. Product and process innovation can develop in the academic environment and find their way to commercialization through so-called “technology transfer”. Research-based spin-offs, in fact, represent a tool to implement it and their use in Italy, despite being recent, has seen an important diffusion, also favored by a better normative and regulatory framework. This study aims at providing a description of the spin-off phenomenon in Italy and to evaluate the performance of spin-offs using various indices, such as survival rate and financial and economic performances.