What matters for innovative startup growth? A study on local, firm-specific, and founder-specific factors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7433/s128.2025.02Keywords:
growth, innovative startup, entrepreneurship, new ventureAbstract
Frame of the research: While several studies focused on innovative startup creation, less attention has been devoted to the drivers of the growth of these startups.
Purpose of the paper: The study investigates drivers of the growth of innovative startups, taking into consideration jointly factors at different levels: local, firm-specific, and founder-specific factors.
Methodology: The study analyzes 701 innovative Italian startups and tests the research hypotheses through a multiple regression analysis.
Findings: Findings reveal a positive association between the number of incubators in the province and the growth of innovative startups. Moreover, a highly educated workforce turns out to be positively related to startup growth. Finally, the prevalence of young individuals in the entrepreneurial team is associated with higher growth, while the entrepreneurs’ gender does not lead to significantly different growth rates, suggesting that the tendency to experience a slower growth that previous studies observed in women-led startups compared to those founded by men does not characterize women-led innovative startups.
Research limits: The research has limitations as it analyzes growth during a relatively limited period and focuses only on the Italian context. Further research is encouraged to examine drivers of long-term growth and to investigate the growth of innovative startups in different national contexts.
Practical implications: The study highlights the importance of supporting the creation of incubators since they can contribute to the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem that fosters new ventures’ development. Additionally, findings suggest that policymakers should support young entrepreneurship since firms created by this category of actors tend to grow faster than others.
Originality of the paper: The study adopts a multi-level perspective by studying jointly factors at three levels – local, firm, and individual – to answer the call for studies that investigate the drivers of startup growth, taking into consideration factors of different nature.
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