The heterogeneity of the development process of new technology-based firms

This work investigates the variety of development processes of start up firms in a regional setting. The existing literature on entrepreneurship lacks accurate analysis of the processes that lead an idea of business to become an established firm. The present paper moves one step towards filling this gap by dynamically investigating the process development of a self-contained population of 78 new technology based firms (NTBFs) in the North Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. By clustering the firms in similar organisational configurations at three different points in time, the results show that it is possible to observe that firms develop along different, sometimes overlapping paths. Our findings contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of the entrepreneurial process and lead to important policy implications.