Massimiliano Guerini

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Politecnico di Milano

The EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey and the EIF Venture Capital Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This publication is based on the results of the 2023 EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey, conducted by the EIF. The pap...

The EIF VC Survey and the EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This publication is based on the results of the 2023 VC Survey, conducted by the EIF with the support of Invest Europe. The paper foc...

Patents are an important signal of the unobserved quality of young, innovative firms. We study patents that protect radical inventions associated with high earnings potential but also a high risk of failure. These previously disregarded signals convey positive and negative information simultaneously, i.e., strong signals that have a dark side. We a...

Substantial research has focused on how innovation is influenced by geography from a macro perspective (e.g., at the country, state, or metropolitan level). However, less attention has been paid to how innovation is configured within a cluster from a micro perspective (e.g., at the district or firm level within a city), i.e., the “micro-geographica...

This paper studies the collaborations between entrepreneurial ventures and universities by investigating the “first match” , namely, the probability that a given entrepreneurial venture, which has never established university collaborations before, forms a collaboration with a given university (out of all the possible collaborations it might have f...

Purpose The authors investigate whether matchings in equity crowdfunding are more likely to happen if homophily exists between investors and investees. They focus on gender, age and geographical proximity as crucial dimensions of similarity among individuals and thus of homophily. Furthermore, they investigate whether the effect of homophily depend...

This exploratory study investigates the relationship of plan-driven Stage-Gate and flexible Agile models with new product development performance through an original conceptualization that focuses on their underlying principles for managing uncertainty and the resulting changes. While Stage-Gate attempts to control uncertainty up-front to avoid lat...

In this paper, we explore which local factors affect the creation of cleantech startups in a geographical area. Specifically, we note that these startups combine innovation and attention to the environment. Thus, we consider two primary sets of local factors: the availability of scientific and technological knowledge and the environmental awareness...

This paper investigates the interplay among three main elements of an entrepreneurial ecosystem: local universities, local financial system, and residents’ individual attitudes. Specifically, we study how the local availability of university knowledge interacts with the relative presence of cooperative banks in the local banking industry and with t...

This paper aims at providing novel evidence about the geographical concentration of venture capital (VC) activity in seven European countries. Drawing upon a unique dataset, VICO 2.0, we describe the geographical distribution of VC investments and VC-backed technology-intensive start-ups and analyse the regional and country-level factors associated...

Despite the omnipresent reach of the Internet, evidence exists that geography matters in crowdfunding. This paper shows that some salient characteristics of the geographical area in which entrepreneurs reside affect the success of the crowdfunding projects they propose. Specifically, we theoretically discuss and empirically document that the altrui...

Grounding on the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship, this paper advances research on innovative start-ups by studying whether and how university knowledge fosters the creation of these firms at the local level. First, we contend that geographical proximity shapes the impact of university knowledge on the creation of innovative start-ups...

While the crowdfunding phenomenon has attracted considerable practitioner and scholarly attention, existing research predominantly reflects a U.S.-centric perspective. This article examines crowdfunding platform creation in 15 European countries. Despite the omnipresent reach of the internet, national boundaries shape the evolution of the European...

In this paper we investigate what drives the performance of high-tech start-ups receiving angel financing, while taking a closer look at the capabilities (i.e. experience) and investment behaviour of business angels (BAs). We exploit a new dataset (extracted from Crunchbase) which consists of 1,933 high-tech start-ups that received at least one fin...

This paper investigates the screening and certification abilities of government-managed venture capital (GVC) firms in Europe. Using a sample of European high-tech entrepreneurial companies, we show that GVC funding increases the likelihood that companies will receive private venture capital (PVC). Moreover, GVC-funded companies that have received...

We explore how and when venture capital (VC) alleviates the financial constraints of portfolio companies. Using a sample comprising 128 VC-backed companies and 233 non-VC-backed companies identified by propensity score matching, we estimate an error-correction model by accounting for the fact that the investment curve may be U shaped because of cap...

In this paper, we investigate what drives the performance of high-tech start-ups receiving angel financing, while taking a closer look at the capabilities (i.e., experience) and investment behavior of business angels (BAs). We exploit a new data set (extracted from Crunchbase), which consists of 1,933 high-tech start-ups that received at least one...

This paper investigates how far in space university knowledge goes to breed the creation of knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs), depending on the nature (either codified or tacit) and quality of this knowledge. We consider the impact of knowledge codified in academic patents and scientific publications and tacit knowledge embodied in university gradua...

This article discusses and empirically investigates whether and how university knowledge and industry knowledge interact to determine the creation of knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs) in a geographic area. In line with the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE), we find that both knowledge types matter for stimulating local entreprene...

This work analyses the effect of informal risk capital financing on a firm’s investment/cash flow sensitivity (ICFS) in a sample of 498 Italian privately held high-tech entrepreneurial ventures (HTEVs) observed from 1996 to 2008. To detect financial constraints, we resort to an error correction model (ECM). We find that the receipt of informal risk...

Purpose – Crowdfunding implies mobilizing the crowd to finance projects which are posted on dedicated websites, known as crowdfunding platforms. Funding is provided by web users in exchange for some claims on the project revenues, or for a reward, or simply for donation. In this paper, we aim at learning more on what determines the probability of a...

The article presents the status of the crowdfunding market in Italy and discusses its future prospects. After defining the crowdfunding phenomenon and highlighting its main elements, we present the results from the Italian Crowdfunding Observatory, managed by the three authors at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of...

This paper examines how the scientific specialization of universities impacts on new firm creation across industries at the local level. In accordance with the Pavitt-Miozzo-Soete taxonomy, we consider eight industry categories, which reflect the characteristics of firms’ innovation patterns and, ultimately, the knowledge inputs they require. Using...

This work studies how and when venture capital (VC) affects the investment of its portfolio firms. We estimate an Error Correction Model that takes into account the non-linearity of the investment curve on a sample of 361 young high-tech firms in 6 European countries. The direct effect of VC on firm's investment is positive and significant only whe...

Using information on new knowledge intensive firms (KIFs) and universities in Italy, this chapter explores whether and how new KIFs creation at the local level depends on university presence. We evaluate the impact on new KIFs creation of: i) the different knowledge inputs offered by universities to geographical areas in which they are embedded and...

The present work analyses the effect of public finance on firm investments in a longitudinal sample of 293 Italian unlisted owner-managed, new technology-based firms (NTBFs), observed over a 10-year period from 1994 to 2003. We find that large, old NTBFs and those located in the north of Italy are not financially constrained, while small, young NTB...

This work studies how the investment-cash ow sensitivity of high-tech com-panies in Europe is aected by nancing from two archetypal types of Venture Capital (VC) investors: Independent VC (IVC) and Public VC (PVC). We esti-mate an investment equation which is derived from a sales accelerator model. To take into account unobserved rm heterogeneity a...

The paper analyses the effect of public subsidies on firm investments, using a longitudinal sample of two hundred ninety-four Italian unlisted owner-managed new-technology- based firms (NTBFs) observed from 1994 to 2003. We have adopted a modified version of the Euler equation and the use of GMM-system estimation techniques that duly take into acco...

In this paper, we consider the first enlargement of the managerial ranks of entrepreneurial ventures since firm foundation. This can occur either by taking on board a new owner-manager or by appointing a salaried manager who reports to the entrepreneurial team. In order to analyze this phenomenon we propose a novel interpretative framework that ack...

This work analyses the effect of public subsidies on firms’ investments in a longitudinal sample of 294 Italian unlisted owner-managed new-technology-based firms (NTBFs), observed over a 10-year period from 1994 to 2003. We use a modified version of the Euler equation and GMM-system estimation techniques that duly take into account the endogeneity...