Massimo G. Colombo

Dynamic Capabilities During the Global Crisis: Evidence from Italian New Technology Based Firms

The recent financial crisis and the subsequent economic downturn are undoubtedly the most important global events affecting modern economic systems since the Great Depression of 1930s. Up to now ideas from strategic management theories on why and how some firms have handled the global crisis better than others have almost been absent from conversations. The global crisis represents a dramatic change in the environmental circumstances that can make a firm aware of the inadequacy of its current resources and capabilities configuration. The dynamic capabilities (DCs) notion deals fundamentally with firms’ abilities to renew, modify, and adapt their current bundle of resources and competencies to face new external contingencies so as to achieve congruence with changing business environment and may be a valuable conceptual tool for understanding how firms cope with the current global crisis. The present paper heeds the call for framing the inquiring on the current global crisis within the strategic management discourse and advances knowledge on the handling of the global crisis by ventures in high tech sectors (i.e. New Technology Based Firms, NTBFs from hereafter). We synthesize our arguments in a set of hypotheses that are tested on a sample of 115 Italian NTBFs extracted from the RITA database developed by the Politecnico di Milano. Results show that DCs have a positive impact on firms’ growth performances, and that the extent of the DCs is positively related with the founders human capital of the firm, the internationalization, the presence of technological alliances and the resource slack. In so doing, we contribute to the debate on why and how some firms have coped with the crisis better than other firms.

Finanziamento tramite venture capital e crescita delle giovani imprese high-tech: un'analisi longitudinale sul ruolo della tipologia di investitore

The financial literature claims that venture capital (VC) financing spurs the growth of new technology- based firms (NTBFs). Nevertheless, the benefits and costs for portfolio companies may depend upon the type of investor. In this paper we distinguish financial intermediaries (FVC) and non-financial companies (i.e. corporate venture capital, CVC) as a source of VC. The aim of the paper is to test whether a) VC financing has a positive effect on the subsequent growth of employment and sales of portfolio companies, and whether b) the magnitude of this effect differs according to the type of investor (i.e. FVC vs. CVC). We consider a 10 year longitudinal dataset composed of 538 Italian NTBFs, most of which are privately held. The sample includes both VC-backed and non-VC-backed firms. In order to capture the effects of VC investments on the subsequent growth of firms and to control for their potentially endogenous nature, we estimate an augmented Gibrat-law type dynamic panel data model with distributed lags through different GMM-system estimators which differ according to the choice of the set of instruments. The results strongly support the view that VC finance spurs firm growth. Moreover, the impact of FVC investments considerably exceeds that of CVC investments, especially as regards sales growth.

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.

Firm Growth in High-tech Sectors: The Impact of Founders' Human Capital and Access to Venture Capital Financing

We analyze the effects of founders human capital and access to venture capital (VC) financing on the growth of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). In the empirical section, we consider a sample composed of 503 Italian NTBFs that operate both in manufacturing and services. In assessing the effects on growth of founders human capital and VC investments, we resort to econometric models that duly take into account the allegedly endogenous nature of this latter variable. The econometric estimates show that VC financing has a large positive effect on growth. More interesting, the human capital of the founding team has both a direct positive effect on growth and an indirect effect mediated by the attracting of VC. Last, the human capital characteristics of founders explaining the growth of NTBFs that do not resort to VC financing lose their explanatory power for VC-backed firms, pointing to the important coaching and signaling functions performed by VC investors.

Academic Start-ups: Theory and Empirical Evidence on Italian Case

In this paper, relying on the resource- and competence-based theories of the firm, we analyze differences between Academic Start-Ups (ASUs) and other New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs) as to their internal resources and competencies configuration and access to external resources and competencies. We argue that these differences have important implications for firms performances. In the empirical section of the paper we compare a sample of 64 Italian ASUs that operate in high-tech industries with two matched pair samples of NTBFs, with matching being based on observable covariates and a modified version of the propensity score method, respectively. The results of the statistical tests show that ASUs and other NTBFs differ in their initial resources and competencies as a consequence of the diverse origin and human capital of founders.