Entrepreneurial Behaviors and Strategic Paths in Innovative SMEs: Evidence from Italy's Campania Region

Abstract

Understanding what drives innovation is essential to securing competitiveness in the current knowledge‐based economy. Do innovative firms share particular characteristics that enable them to pursue their strategic paths? And what lessons can other businesses learn from their experiences? An analysis of eight innovative Italian small‐ and medium‐size firms reveals significant similarities in their leaders’ personal traits, motivation, and behavior, despite differences in corporate purpose and strategy. These common characteristics, both in terms of organization and operations, can be considered the essential elements that allow innovative firms to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage, despite the challenges of their work environment. Clearly focused on their core business, the leaders are highly educated, primarily motivated by values rather than profit, creative, and able to adapt to changing circumstances. Their organizations also share several key characteristics, including flexibility, a high level of delegation, effective communication, careful attention to customer demand, willingness to network and partner with competitors, and a strong focus on research. ©2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Start-up competitions as learning environment to foster the entrepreneurial process

“…In the last years, SUCs organizers have increasingly restricted participation to proposals focussing on specific industries or technological fields. This trend could depend on different factors, such as economic and technological advances, social improvements, Italian/EU fiscal orientation and policy makers’ expectations to favour investments in cutting-edge industries or fields consistent with the level of knowledge and socio-economic development of a country (Thomas et al , 2015). Moreover, it is reasonable to suppose that EU and national policies are strongly affecting the type and the target group of such initiatives.…”

“…Furthermore, the number of private institutions that organize SUCs is strongly higher in the north than in the south (21 vs 1, respectively). Evidently, the lack of an extensive venture capitalists network represents a significant limitation to the development of an adequate background for SUCs diffusion (Thomas et al , 2015). It is worthwhile to highlight how public authorities (29 per cent), universities and research centres (53 per cent) are slightly more active in the south than in the north as SUCs funding institutions.…”

“…The latter are considered key aspects for aspiring entrepreneurs because, commonly, their proposals are characterized by innovativeness combined with high potentiality, but they are also very risky and difficult to develop (Thomas et al , 2015). Finally, SUCs are regarded as supportive and non-threatening environments, where ideas can be tested and validated, and entrepreneurs can be properly stimulated and motivated (Franco and Haase, 2009; Michelsen et al , 2013).…”

Developing Entrepreneurship in Digital Economy: The Ecosystem Strategy for Startups Growth

“…As researchers agree to sustain that the entrepreneurial process is the result of a complex interaction between individuals, cultural, social, and environmental factors, the alternative that is intended to endorse is to concentrate efforts on entrepreneurs/aspiring entrepreneurs who show the best business plans, the preeminent entrepreneurial features, and the ability to withstand market difficulties [3,28,34,42]. These entrepreneurs have the higher probability of founding and managing entrepreneurial ventures.…”

“…To this purpose, the necessity to create a distinctive type of supportive economic and social framework emerges. It should be planned to captivate entrepreneurs with wide economic potential [16,19,42]; to establish steady and productive relationships among all the local stakeholders; to provide relational forms of support (such as network building, institutional alignment of priorities, strategic guidance, leadership development, and mentoring) ( [20], p. 2016), instead of money-based facilities (from grants to tax incentives or subsidies) that have showed limited impact [10]; to attract different businesses funding resource (such as debt finance, crowd-funding, and peer to peer) targeted to the specific requirements of the businesses [43]; to nurture the developing of the innovation system joining local customers end users, suppliers, universities, and so on [50]; to guarantee the recognition of unprotected and open sources innovations, respect on technological innovations and the protection of intellectual property rights [46]; and to limit its action at regional or local level [33].…”