Identifying the factors that contribute to the success of new ventures is a difficult and challenging task. In that respect, this paper proposes an analysis of the intellectual capital within new business ventures. Based on the study of a sample of 130 new companies, for the purpose of this work we have analysed the influence of the proposed intangible assets on the success of newly-created organizations, acknowledging the key role of the human and relational capital in the first few years of the life of the business.

Sustainable entrepreneurship has received substantial recognition from academics and practitioners in the last decade, with a noticeable and rapidly increases of publications on the topic. Through bibliometric techniques and tools, this study allows mapping the main academic literature on sustainable entrepreneurship and analyzes the most substantial contributions to the advances of research in this field. The chronological analysis of literature from the Web of Science-Social Sciences Citation Index (WoS-SSCI) database-until January 2018-provides new insights not previously reviewed, such as the journals, authors and articles more influential so far. As a result, 282 articles were retrieved, which were published in 140 journals and written by 663 authors affiliated to 413 institutions, from 50 countries. The analysis allowed identifying publication evolution over time, and provides clues about the opportunities for future research.

This study seeks to highlight the key role played by relational capital in new business start-ups. Following a review of previous research examining the success factors of new ventures and the role played by intellectual capital, our study sets out to achieve this objective by analyzing the impact of a set of intangible relational assets on the initial success of new business start-ups. Based on a study of 130 firms, we analyzed six hypotheses regarding the possible positive relationship between the relational capital of a start-up company and its success in its first few years of business.

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