Giovani imprese ad alta tecnologia di fronte alla crisi : quali strategie di reazione?

The paper explores the reaction of new technology-based firms (NTBF) in Italy to the recent economic crisis. Using data from the RITA database on the Italian NTBF population founded since 1984, we document the consequences of the crisis in terms of: i) exit rates; ii) the growth rates of sales and employees in the firms that had survived the crisis at year-end 2009; and iii) the owner-managers 2010 performance expectations. Lastly, we describe how firms reacted to the crisis and the strategic changes it induced them to make. Our data show clearly that taking a "pro-active" approach not only led to higher growth rates in 2009, but also improved the outlook for 2010.