Alessandra Colombelli

Alessandra Colombelli
Polytechnic University of Turin | polito · DIGEP - Department of Management and Production Engineering

PhD

About

91
Publications
22,230
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2,625
Citations
Additional affiliations
December 2016 - March 2017
Polytechnic University of Turin
Position
  • Professor

Publications

Publications (91)
Article
This research paper conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis of the Instagram campaign run by WeAreHERe, a peer-to-peer mentorship program designed for women high school students and first-year university students at Politecnico di Torino. The study scrutinizes 92 posts shared on the WeAreHERe Instagram page during the academic year 2021-2022. The pr...
Article
This study examines the relationship between openness to external collaborations and innovation outcomes in tourism micro-firms, considering the variety of partners, the geographical outreach of the relationships, and the number of implemented innovation types. A quantitative analysis of tourism micro-firms located in the Italian Alps is complement...
Article
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This paper investigates the role of local knowledge specializations from universities in the artificial intelligence (AI) startup creation process. The empirical analysis is grounded in the Knowledge Spillovers Theory of Entrepreneurship. It provides evidence of the interplay between the presence of university knowledge specializations and the crea...
Article
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Entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) are particular systems of interdependent actors and relations that directly or indirectly support the creation and growth of new ventures. EE can vary a lot, based on a unique and dynamic combination of several elements whose relevance can differ across regions. Most studies acknowledged, or ex-ante assumed, that EE...
Article
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Plain English Summary Digital knowledge spillovers and digital skill endowment support the creation of digital innovative start-ups. The rapid diffusion of digital technologies has generated new opportunities for developing innovative entrepreneurship, which is essential for employment growth, new job creation, and socio-economic wealth. Therefore,...
Book
This Element combines the advances of the economics of knowledge and innovation implementing the Schumpeterian notion of creative response to understand the determinants and the effects of the rate and direction of technological and organizational change and its variance across time and space, firms, and industries. The notion of creative response...
Article
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This study investigates the relationship between the entry of universities into a new technology field and the innovative activities of firms located in the same geographical area. We aim to assess the presence of a significant correlation between academic research and technological specialization. The empirical setting is based on a dataset of 846...
Conference Paper
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This study aims to investigate if previous managerial or entrepreneurial experiences of entrepreneurs could moderate the use of a scientific approach to decision-making. To test this, we embedded a field experiment involving 132 real start-ups from Italy. We collected data on performances using phone calls for 64 weeks. Using econometrics analysis,...
Article
This article examines the gender gap in patenting activities and the predominance of male innovators among outstanding inventors, so-called ‘stars'. In particular, we investigate different metrics of productivity among top inventors, identified employing different definitions with respect to the quantity and quality of output. We distinguish betwee...
Article
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Entrepreneurship is considered a key driver for economic growth. Therefore, more and more studies are investigating the role and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. In this context, the present study is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs, with a learning-by-doing approach, on the entrepreneurial intention...
Article
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The aim of this paper is to investigate the implications of Challenge-Based Learning programs on entrepreneurial skills, and on the mindset and intentions of university students, through a quantitative approach. Resorting to an original database, we analyzed the pre- and post-levels of entrepreneurial skills, mindset and intention of 127 students w...
Article
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This paper provides novel evidence on co-evolution patterns of the technological specialization of innovation activities of firms and academic institutions located in the same European region during the years from 2003 to 2014. We exploit a novel and unique dataset merging data on EU-funded R&D projects, universities, patents, and economic region-l...
Article
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The paper is aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the role played by universities in the technological development and specialization of the territories in which they are located. Our methodology adopts both quantitative and qualitative techniques. First, we provide evidence of the interplay between the technological specialization of unive...
Article
We examine whether the existing stock of immigrant firms induces more new firms of the same nationality in the same sector and province. We carry out the analysis by using Italian administrative data on the population of individual firms observed over the time window 2002–13. We find support for a strong attractiveness (pulling) effect, which signi...
Article
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This paper investigates the impact of eco-innovation, i.e., innovations aimed at improving firms’ environmental performances, and environmental policy stringency on firms’ growth processes, with a special focus on gazelles, i.e., firms that show higher than average growth rates. In a context shaped by more and more stringent environmental regulator...
Article
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This paper investigates how the characteristics of the local knowledge bases, stemming from the accumulation and recombination of competences over time, spur the emergence of new entrepreneurial activities across industries at the Italian provincial level. To do so, we exploit information on the number of new firms appearing across diverse industri...
Article
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We blend the economics of diversity and evolutionary economic geography theories and study the relationship between the cultural diversity of foreign-born entrepreneurs and regional sectoral diversification, proxied by the sectoral variety of newborn firms. We focus on Italian evidence and use a unique data set that stems from a combination of diff...
Article
This paper defines and analyses incubators that mainly support start-ups with a significant social impact. In 2016, a survey was conducted on the 162 incubators active in Italy, and a total of 88 responses were received. An analysis of the literature and of this dataset led to the identification of three types of incubators: Business, Mixed, and So...
Article
Innovative start-ups can create and shape new industries and generate considerable economic and societal impacts. Accordingly, a variety of policy initiatives are aimed at promoting the establishment, growth and impact of innovative start-ups. Designing such policies is a challenging task, because most start-ups fail. In addition, only a small shar...
Article
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This paper investigates the impact of the generation of green (environmental) technologies on the market value (MV) of a sample of listed companies. The analysis is grounded on the combination of two different theoretical approaches, that is the one focusing on the relationship between MV and innovation and the one pertaining to the economic effect...
Article
This paper analyzes the importance given by venture capital (VC) firms to the different characteristics of the patent portfolio of a young innovative company (YIC). In an attempt to go beyond previous studies, the authors argue that not only is the size of a technological portfolio significant but also its nature. It is also examined whether the co...
Article
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Building on the literature on agglomeration economies, this study examines how urbanization, industry-diversification, district economics and incubating initiatives are associated to the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 6018 innovative start-ups distributed across 104 Italian NUTS 3 regions....
Article
We live in turbulent times, but when has this not been the case? The history of regions and the ‘regional studies project’ has always had at its core concerns relating to new and increased social and spatial inequalities resulting from economic and political change. Whatever change has occurred to cause this turbulence, some people and places have...
Article
Innovative entrepreneurship is at the heart of economic development in all modern economic systems. However, we observe in several developed countries - especially Europe - a languishing in the capacity to foster creative destruction (i.e. Schumpeter Mark 1, SM1) dynamics and to create young innovative companies (YICs), capable to establish themsel...
Article
Purpose The purpose of this paper is threefold. It is aimed at identifying: a broad set of entrepreneurial activities; different university entrepreneurial models; and the entrepreneurial best practices of advanced European S&T universities. Design/methodology/approach The paper has adopted a mixed-method design. By mainly relying on primary dat...
Article
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There is wide consensus about the importance of green technologies in achieving superior economic and environmental performances. However, the literature on their determinants has neglected the creation of green start-ups as a way of introducing green technologies onto the market. Drawing upon the knowledge spillovers theory of entrepreneurship (KS...
Article
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In this paper, we explore the way the evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems is shaped by different governance designs. We propose a theoretical framework in which we discuss what type of governance design would best fit the needs of an entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout its evolution. We also provide argumentations concerning the mechanisms tha...
Article
Le università si trovano oggi a dover perseguire la loro "terza missione", essendo chiamate a contribuire allo sviluppo economico regionale. Esse svolgono pertanto diverse attività di trasferimento tecnologico. Questo articolo ha l'obiettivo di analizzare l'adozione di tali attività nelle università tecniche europee e di identificare i possibili mo...
Conference Paper
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Vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystems have developed within the CLUSTER Consortium universities with significant contributions to European and global startups and entrepreneurial initiatives. CLUSTER is a consortium of 12 top engineering and technology universities in Europe and the E4T Erasmus plus project develops interactive programs for our stude...
Research
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Un fenomeno di grande attualità e rilevanza, che sta attirando sempre maggiore attenzione all'interno degli ecosistemi imprenditoriali a livello internazionale è rappresentato dalle start-up create da studenti universitari o neo-laureati. Questo fenomeno sta diventando sempre più frequente e rilevante anche in Italia, sebbene rimanga ancora poco st...
Research
Un fenomeno di grande attualità e rilevanza, che sta attirando sempre maggiore attenzione all'interno degli ecosistemi imprenditoriali a livello internazionale è rappresentato dalle start-up create da studenti non ancora laureati o neo-laureati. Questo fenomeno sta diventando sempre più frequente e rilevante anche in Italia, sebbene rimanga ancora...
Article
According to the knowledge-spillovers theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE), local knowledge spillovers affect entrepreneurial dynamics, because of knowledge asymmetries and uncertainty. Most of the empirical literature has tested this hypothesis using a measure of local knowledge stock. This paper is aimed at extending the framework by showing that th...
Article
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The locus of knowledge externalities and the cost of knowledge. Regional Studies. This paper provides an extended Crépon–Duguet–Mairesse (CDM) approach to analyse jointly the simultaneous effects of knowledge spillovers in the knowledge-generation and technology production functions. It introduces the distinction between imitation and knowledge ext...
Article
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This paper investigates the reasons why entry per se is not necessarily good and the evidence showing that innovative start-ups survive longer than their non-innovative counterparts. In this framework, our own empirical analysis shows that greater survival is achieved when start-ups engage successfully in both product innovation and process innovat...
Article
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This paper aimed at investigating the relationship between the features of local knowledge bases and the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy. The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship has here been combined with the recombinant knowledge hypothesis in order to derive a theoretical framework that could emphasize the heterogeneous natu...
Technical Report
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The “analysis of the role and engagement of universities with regard to participation in the framework programmes” was launched by the European Commission, DG RTD, to contribute to a better understanding of the motivations for university participation in the Framework Programmes for research and technological development, the resulting patterns of...
Article
This paper contributes to the economics of knowledge with an analysis of the knowledge cost function, shedding light on the determinants of the large variance in the cost of knowledge across firms. The amount and the composition of external knowledge and the internal stocks of knowledge that firms can access and use in the generation of new technol...
Article
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This paper explores the role of internal and external knowledge in the generation of new technological knowledge. It implements the notion of recombinant knowledge generation function with the appreciation of: (i) the complementary—as opposed to supplementary—role of external knowledge and (ii) the role of the size and composition of the internal s...
Article
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors affecting the growth of companies listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), the London Stock Exchange market for young and growing companies. Design/methodology/approach – The author investigates post-initial public offering (IPO) growth for a panel of 665 companies listed on...
Article
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The paper investigates the patterns of persistence of innovation and of the properties of firms’ knowledge base (KB) across a sample of Italian firms in the period 1998–2006. The analysis draws upon a theoretical representation of knowledge as a collective good, stemming from the recombination of knowledge bits that are fragmented and dispersed acr...
Article
This paper analyzes the emergence of new technology-based sectors at the regional level focusing on nanotechnology, an infant technology whose evolution can be traced on the basis of patent application filings. We employ a methodological framework based on the ‘product-space’ approach, to investigate whether the development of new technologies is l...
Article
Italian Abstract: Nella fase prolungata di bassa crescita economica che caratterizza l’economia italiana il tema delle start-up innovative e degli strumenti che possono favorirne la nascita e lo sviluppo assume particolare rilievo. Gli incubatori d’impresa rappresentano una delle soluzioni proposte dalla letteratura economica e realizzate concretam...
Article
The paper analyzes the effects of the properties of firms' knowledge base on the survival likelihood of firms. Drawing upon the analysis of the patterns of co-occurrence of technological classes in patent applications, we derive the coherence, variety and cognitive distance indexes, accounting respectively for technological complementarity, differe...
Article
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This paper investigates the relationship between the creation of new firms and the properties of the local knowledge bases, like coherence, cognitive distance and variety. By combining the literature on the knowledge spillovers of entrepreneurship and that on the recombinant knowledge approach, we posit that locally available knowledge matters to t...
Article
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The purpose of this chapter is to provide an extended overview on the debate on the European firm, by articulating it against the backdrop of more traditional theories of the firm. The chapter also proposes a different interpretation of the issue by grafting the discussion into the interpretative framework of complexity theory, so as to provide a n...
Article
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This paper analyzes the emergence of new technology-based sectors at the regional level. We focus on the specific case of nanotechnology as representative of an industry based on a technology still in infancy whose evolution can be reliably traced on the basis of filed patent submissions. We implement a methodological framework based on the „produc...
Article
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The paper investigates the patterns of persistence of knowledge and innovation across a sample of Italian firms in the period 1998-2006. While most of the empirical analysis of persistence focus on innovation as proxied by capital stock or the introduction of process/product innovation, this paper proposes to investigate the persistence of knowledg...
Article
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Purpose – This chapter aims at exploring the effects of globalization on technological change by focusing on the determinants of the direction of technological change at the firm level of analysis by following the induced technological change approach implemented by the localized technological change hypothesis. Methodology/approach – In the empiri...
Article
In the paper we wish to examine if the firms that innovate know a higher growth than the firm that do not. We use diverse waves of CIS for the French industries over the period 1992-2004 and carry out different models and new econometric methods (quantile regression). Our main findings are that innovative firms produce more growth than non innovati...
Article
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This article analyzes the contribution of high-growth firms (HGFs) to the process of knowledge creation. We articulate a demand-pull innovation framework in which knowledge creation is driven by sales growth, and knowledge stems from creative recombination. Building on the literature on HGFs and economic growth, we investigate whether “gazelles” fo...
Article
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Since the Lisbon agenda in 2000, Europe stated the goal to become the most advanced knowledge economy in the world relying specifically on the increase and strengthen of its human capital and technological endowments. However, given the presence of localized externalities in the knowledge accumulation process, this policy may produce distortive and...
Article
Due to the polarisation of the Italian production system into small and large enterprises, the role of medium-sized enterprises has been largely neglected. As a consequence, studies analysing the factors that affect economic development in Italy have mainly focused on the role of small businesses or on aggregates of small and medium-sized enterpris...
Article
The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between firm performance after the IPO and its entrepreneurial orientation (EO). In our work we want to test if entrepreneurial oriented firms show a better market performance signalling that investors valuate it positively. To this purpose, we focus on a particular sample of entrepreneurial...
Article
The paper investigates the effects of external sources of knowledge on firm growth. In line with the knowledge spillovers literature, we focus on the relationship between firms and universities, considered as a crucial source of knowledge. To this purpose, we analyse a sample of UK public companies in the period 1995 to 2006. Our findings confirm t...
Article
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In this paper we articulate and test the hypothesis that TFP is a reliable and relevant measure of firm’s innovation capabilities, and, as such, accounts for Tobin’s q indicator. With this aim, we investigate empirically the relationship between firm level total factor productivity and the Tobin’s q. Measuring Tobin’s q allows inferring the actual...
Article
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The aim of this paper is to highlight the main features of entrepreneurial businesses and to shed light on the determinants of the growth of small firms undertaking an IPO. For this purpose, we centre our attention on companies going public on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a market dedicated to young and growing companies. In the paper w...
Article
The paper explores the effect of scientific institutions on firm’s growth, coupling regional science and entrepreneurship approaches. We focus on the role of universities, largely considered in the literature as the main source of knowledge spillovers. To this purpose, we centre our attention on UK public companies on the Alternative Investment Mar...
Article
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 sele...
Article
Tramite la costruzione e l’analisi di un database che raccoglie informazioni di natura economico-finanziaria e i risultati di una survey sul tema della media impresa, lo studio si pone un duplice obiettivo. In primo luogo, intende individuare quali sono le peculiarità che costituiscono gli elementi a supporto della crescita della media impresa, anc...
Article
The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between firm performances after the IPO and their entrepreneurial orientation (EO). In our work we want to test if more entrepreneurial oriented firms show better market performances signalling that investors valuate it positively. To this purpose, we focus on a particular sample of entrepren...
Article
Full-text available
Entrepreneurship is more and more considered a key driver of economic performance. Recent works in the literature on this research area (see Saxenian, 1994; Audretsch and Keilbach, 2004; Cooke, 2004; Cassia, Fattore and Paleari, 2006) suggest that there is a positive link between entrepreneurship capital, regional economic performance and the creat...
Article
In un quadro di riferimento verso le knowledge economies, questo lavoro sottopone ad analisi l’insieme dei percorsi di sviluppo seguiti dai territori le cui economie appaiono ancora caratterizzate da una sensibile componente industriale, con una specializzazione nei settori più tradizionali delle attività manifatturiere. A questo scopo, vengono pos...
Article
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- In this paper we analyse the innovative capacity of the most productive and most industrialised Italian regions by comparing them with a set of European regions that in the past two decades followed an industrial restructuring path towards knowledgebased sectors, doing so via the formation of a Regional Innovation System. Even though the European...
Article
This paper aims at exploring the determinants of the direction of technological change at the firm level of analysis. Following the localized technological change approach, we suggest that firms will respond to change in factor market costs by introducing neutral or biased technological changes according to their innovation and knowledge generation...