Lucio Cassia

Product Innovation in Family versus Nonfamily Firms: An Exploratory Analysis

How family firms manage product innovation remains an overlooked topic in existing business research. This happens despite the fact that family businesses play a crucial role across all economies, and they often use technological innovation to nurture their competitive advantage. By drawing upon the resource‐based view of the firm as well as agency, stewardship, and behavioral theories and using empirical evidence gathered through a multiple case study, the paper studies how and why the anatomy of the product innovation process differs between family and nonfamily firms. The analysis shows that family businesses differ from nonfamily ones as regards product innovation strategies and organization of the innovation process.

Strategic innovation and new product development in family firms: an empirically grounded theoretical framework

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the relationship between the presence of the family variable within a business enterprise and the managerial factors affecting the success of new product development (NPD). This can be structured into three research questions: What is the relationship between the presence of the family variable within a business enterprise and the managerial factors affecting the success of NPD activities? How the managerial factors affecting the NPD process are faced in family firms? Which are the main differences (e.g. strengths and/or weaknesses) in dealing with the managerial factors affecting the NPD process between family and non‐family firms?Design/methodology/approach – The study employs a grounded‐theory and case‐study approach to investigate the relationship between the presence of the family variable within a business enterprise and the managerial factors affecting the success of NPD. The starting point is an in‐depth literature review on the managerial factors different...

Hyper-Growth of SMEs: Toward a Reconciliation of Entrepreneurial Orientation and Strategic Resources

Purpose – This study seeks to focus on factors characterizing a pool of hyper‐growth firms, trying to gather insights on how the hyper‐growth firms achieve hyper‐growth.Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical framework is proposed, borrowing well established approaches from strategic management and entrepreneurship. Subsequently, some explorative case studies are described and help in understanding how much of a firms hyper‐growth can be explained by the resource endowment and entrepreneurial orientation (EO). A revised framework and some propositions are eventually suggested.Findings – Hyper‐growth seems mainly explainable by extraordinary business opportunities and extraordinary access to resources (especially knowledge‐based). Entrepreneurship appears much more as a moderating variable, rather than an explanatory variable per se of hyper‐growth.Research limitations/implications – Although the case study approach is robustly motivated as a research step that can contribute to the process of theory ...

The Impact of Family Involvement on SMEs’ Performance: Theory and Evidence

By complementing agency theory with behavioral assumptions, we explore the effects of family involvement on small and medium enterprises’ (s) performance. We identify three separate dimensions of family involvement and hypothesize nonlinear, direct, and interaction effects on the performance of an . The evidence on 787 suggests that an inverted ‐shaped relationship exists between family ownership and performance, and ownership dispersion among family members negatively affects performance. Balancing family and nonfamily members in the top management team () is found to be beneficial to s’ performance, but the family ratio in the becomes crucial only at high levels of family ownership.

Are Youth Really Different? New Beliefs for Old Practices in Entrepreneurship

This article reviews and systematises prior studies focusing on the differences between young and old people in entrepreneurship. This study highlights that the young are different in several areas: accumulation of resources and skills; psychological, cognitive and motivational attributes; and reaction to influences from the environment, culture and norms. This article provides guidance about promising avenues for future research and encourages policy attention for the field of youth entrepreneurship.

Financing Patterns in New Technology-Based Firms: An Extension of the Pecking Order Theory

Understanding financial strategies and patterns of new firms is crucial to the theoretical unravelling of the entrepreneurial process as well as to the elaboration of appropriate support programs from practitioner and policy maker. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether a pecking order theory underlies the financing strategies of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). From the analysis of previous literature on the subject, controversial results emerge: while some authors have confirmed a traditional pecking order theory for NTBFs, others, on grounds of NTBFs major financial constraints derived from higher information asymmetry, have proposed a revised pecking order, where access to equity (in particular private equity) occurs prior to debt. This research has been carried out applying an approach based on estimation of internal financial gap (Cosh et al., ECOJ 119:71494-1533, 2009) using data from the Kauffman Firm Survey. Additionally, we extend the pecking order prediction by examining the effect of human capital as determinants for financing decisions, given its crucial role in shaping entrepreneurial dynamics of NTBFs. Our results support the existence of a revised pecking order in the case of NTBFs; moreover entrepreneurs age and experience play a role in clarifying financial priorities of NTBFs.

THE VALUATION OF FIRMS LISTED ON THE NUOVO MERCATO: THE PEER COMPARABLES APPROACH

In this chapter we study the peer comparable approach used for the valuation of companies that went public on the Italian Nuovo Mercato. In Italy, IPO prospectuses often report the valuation methods used by investment banks. This allows us to analyze the accuracy of “real-world” valuation estimates. We show that underwriters rely on price-to-book and price-earnings multiples. The valuation estimates generated by these multiples are closest to offer prices. Conversely, when using enterprise value ratios comparable firms’ multiples are typically higher than those of the firms going public. We argue that underwriters have the possibility to select comparables that make their valuations look conservative.

Valuation Accuracy and Infinity Horizon Forecast: Empirical Evidence from Europe

This paper focuses on the assumptions of infinite-horizon forecasting in the field of firm valuation. The estimate of long-run continuing values is based on the hypothesis that companies should have reached the steady state at the end of the period of explicit forecasts. It is argued that the equivalence between cash accounting and accrual accounting is the way of verifying the steady-state assumption, defined as the state when a firm earns exactly its cost of capital, i.e., what we would expect in pure-competition settings. From this definition, we derive that the “ideal” growth rate to use in steady state is equal to the reinvestment rate times Weighted Average Cost of Capital. To validate our approach, we collect a sample of 784 analyst valuations and compare how the implied target prices deviate from what the target prices would have been using the “ideal” steady-state growth rates. Using Logit and Cox regression models, we find that this deviation has predictive value over the probability that actual market price reaches the target price over the following 12-month period - the smaller the deviation the greater is the likelihood that the market price reaches the target price.

Exploring the Effect of Family Control on the Characteristics of SMEs in Northern Italy

We studied the effect of family control on the characteristics of small- and medium-sized enterprises located in the Northern Italian province of Bergamo. The analysis included aspects such as demographic characteristics, cost and productivity of labour, financial ratios, and the performance of 745 SMEs. Family-controlled firms emerged as a predominant organizational type in almost all the industries and a number of relevant differences were found between family-controlled and non-family firms. In sum, family-controlled firms in our sample outperformed their non-family counterparts in terms of return on sales, return on equity and return on assets.

Regional Transformation Processes through the Universities—Institutions—Industry Relationship

The purpose of this paper is, first, to highlight the role of the relationships between universities, institutions and firms in different regional development processes working towards a knowledge economy, and, second, to draw some implications for local policy makers. Adopting the regional innovation system (RIS) approach, the authors analyse selected regions – Cambridge (UK), Baden-Württemberg (Germany), Göteborg, (Sweden), Singapore, Milwaukee (USA) and Pittsburgh (USA) – which in the last two decades have undergone a process of economic and industrial renewal. From their analysis of the regional transformation process, they classify three different regional development paths defined respectively as ‘RIS-into’, ‘RIS-from’ and ‘RIS-through’ processes. Some common features emerge. In the process of regional development cooperation among universities, institutions and firms is essential. In particular, local universities play a crucial role in providing highly-educated people, research and spin-off activities. Thus universities are able to foster knowledge spillovers and interact constructively with firms. These interactions are nurtured and promoted by local policy makers.