1,721,077 research outputs found
L’uso strategico del Corporate Venture Capital. Come le grandi imprese sfruttano le risorse esterne per creare nuove competenze.
No full textFin dai primi anni '90, si è registrata una tendenza sempre più marcata da parte di grandi imprese consolidate (le cosiddette incumbent) ad attivare programmi di Corporate Venture Capital(CVC) per creare nuove competenze e favorire la ricerca di un vantaggio competitivo attraverso l'utilizzo di risorse esterne. Il CVC, generalmente definito come la pratica da parte di imprese di natura non finanziaria di effettuare investimenti in capitale di rischio in giovani società, rappresenta una componente chiave di imprenditorialità aziendale, anche detta corporate venturing, e una concreta sfida organizzativa per far fronte alla necessità di sviluppare un certo livello di diversificazione di risorse senza farsi carico in maniera esclusiva del rischio di apertura di nuove linee di business o di sviluppo di innovazioni tecnologiche. Unitamente a forti ripercussioni pratiche, lo studio del CVC ha attirato l'attenzione della letteratura accademica.
Questo volume presenta una sintesi delle principali teorie volte a spiegarne il fenomeno e approfondisce tre temi di forte interesse in ambito di strategia aziendale. Focalizzandosi sul rapporto tra CVC e altre forme di external corporate venturing, viene in primo luogo analizzato il ruolo del CVC rispetto ai più comuni metodi di collaborazione conosciuti in strategia (tra cui alleanze, joint venture e acquisizioni), mostrandone vantaggi, svantaggi e differenze. La seconda parte si concentra sulla relazione tra CVC e diversificazione aziendale, per comprendere come le imprese cercano di allineare ai propri intenti strategici di diversificazione aziendale (principalmente basata sullo sfruttamento delle risorse interne) una serie di azioni strategiche attuate tramite investimenti in risorse esterne, quali il CVC. Infine, partendo da una serie di casi studio, vengono approfondite le diverse architetture strategiche e organizzative che il CVC può assumere,per evidenziarne la forte eterogeneità, le caratteristiche strutturali, i benefici in termini di crescita aziendale e mostrare i trend principali e le criticità più anguste di questi programmi
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION MANAGEMENT Conference Paper Abstracts
No full textThe article addresses the question of how the patent portfolios of startup companies are evaluated by venture capital firms (VCs). Evidence indicates that VCs often do assess these values accurately. Studies are cited which demonstrate that VC financing and valuation correlate with patent rates and protection. The question of whether the industry affiliations of VCs affect their valuations is addressed. Whether the amount of financing obtained by startups depends on the number of their patents which involve core technological specialties is also discussed. Such issues are examined using examples drawn from the field of nanotechnology
The Impact of Local Social Norms on Access to Finance: The Case of Environmental Entrepreneurship
No full textThis paper analyses community-level dynamics that may influence VC investment decisions in green entrepreneurship. We suggest an inverted U-shape relation between NPO density and VC staging. Additionally, we test two moderators, reflecting different ways of interpreting local social norms on environmental issues: NPOs' bureaucratization and professionalization and citizen sensitivity
Does Reputation Facilitate Startups' Access to Venture Capital Funding?
No full textCorporate reputation has been widely considered an important intangible asset that firms can use for improving their levels of performance. Previous works mainly focused their attention on large established firms and on the relationship between reputation and consumers’ behavior. Based on a sample of 200 UK startups operating in the micro and nanotechnology sector since 1995, we analyze the importance of different types of reputation for startups in their search for venture capital (VC) funding. Our results show that (a) not only attribute-specific reputational signals, based on startup characteristics (i.e., human capital and technological capabilities), are an important driver of VC investment decisions, but also general reputation measured by media coverage (both in terms of visibility and favorableness); (b) general media favorableness has a greater impact than general media visibility on VC funding and (c) general media reputation weakly moderates the relationship between attribute-specific reputational signals and the likelihood of receiving VC funding
From the lab to the stock market? The characteristics and impact of university-oriented seed funds in Europe
Full text linkThis work investigates the role of university and PRO-oriented seed funds (USFs)— VC funds with an explicit mission to make investments in academic spin-offs and support technology transfer—as instruments for addressing funding gaps and facilitating the commer- cialization of academic technologies. We first offer an overview of USFs in Europe, highlighting their heterogeneity and principal characteristics. Second, we exploit a unique data set of 1,497 start-ups (including 733 USF-backed start-ups and another 764 start-ups backed by other VC funds) to analyze how USF-backed companies perform in terms of exit rates, staging, and syndication levels when compared with non-USF-backed companies. Empirical evidence sug- gests that USF-backed companies perform better in staging and syndication but worse in exit rates. Moreover, our analyses show that, within the group of USF-backed companies, the ones that can attract more follow-on funding and investors are those financed by USFs that are internally managed by a universities/PROs and are linked to universities with high scientific rankings
Financing technology transfer: assessment of university-oriented proof-of-concept programmes
Full text linkThis study analyses the characteristics of the proof-of-concept (POC) programmes initiated by university and public research organisations in Europe, as a mechanism to address funding gaps and improve the transfer of research-based inventions to markets. We contribute to the literature on investment readiness of new ventures and on financing technology transfer by assessing the structure of such funding instruments and identifying critical success factors for their design and implementation. The analyses rely on seven in-depth case studies of university-oriented POCs in Europe
How B Corps Are Hybrid? Unpacking Hybridity in Social Enterprises
Full text linkResearchers have extensively studied the hybrid condition of organizations that simultaneously pursue social and economic goals. Yet, hybridity manifests itself in multiple ways. This paper aims to identify the different facets of the hybrid condition, conducting an empirical study in a specific setting of hybrid organizations: the B corporations (i.e., for-profit organizations awarded with a prosocial certification). We propose and test a multifactor scale measuring how hybridity (i) occurs, (ii) influences firms' organizational processes, and (iii) shapes firms' social impact thesis. We test the scale on a sample of 101 Italian B Corp firms, identifying four factors that determine the hybrid nature of B Corps and characterizing two ideal types of B Corps. We contribute to the literature on social entrepreneurship and hybrid organizations by capturing the nuances of B Corps' hybridity
The power of narrative: engaging different audiences through media content in ICOs
No full textIn this paper, we draw on the distinction between two types of audiences in the Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) context (i.e. traditional investors and communities of followers) to explore what kind of information embedded in media news they are more interested in and which dimensions have the greatest impact in attracting their attention. Using a semantic network approach, we analyze the content of 1,976 news related to a sample of 395 ICOs between 2015 and 2020. The results suggest that news content attracts the attention of each type of audience differently: conventional investors prioritize aspects such as ICO regulatory issues and the cryptocurrency project's management team, overlooking factors such as news length or sentiment. In contrast, Twitter users show a stronger interest in ICO attributes, news length, and specific linguistic elements such as sentiment and the use of financial terminology
The identity of Social Impact Venture Capitalists: exploring social linguistic positioning and linguistic distinctiveness through text mining.
Full text linkImpact investing is gaining momentum as an investment practice that optimizes both financial and social outcomes. However, the market is still in its emerging stage, and there is ambiguity regarding the definition of players and practices. In this paper, we adopt an investor identity perspective and use a linguistic approach to explore how social impact venture capitalists (SIVCs) communicate their identities and actions to their external stakeholders. Through a text mining analysis of the websites of 195 investors worldwide, our results reveal four types of investors who differ in terms of their social linguistic positioning and linguistic distinctiveness. Finally, by training a tree boosting machine learning model, we assess the extent to which the use of different linguistic styles is associated with website traffic
How social is a social impact VC fund? Understanding funds’ communication strategy through text mining
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