Abstract

Innovative start-ups play an increasingly central role in modern industrial economies, in fact, since them encourage and incentives investment in innovation, they are a key driver for growth. The aim of this paper is to analyze the peculiarities of innovative Italian start-ups with a particular focus on the localization choices of these knowledge-based companies. Through the use of localization software, the position of innovative start-ups and the distance from the main research centers in the established province were mapped. According to the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship (kste), the analysis of data shows how innovative Italian start-ups tend to establish themselves in the immediate proximity of research centers (universities), which thanks to advanced research generate knowledge spillovers, valued on the market by entrepreneurs with high human capital able to seize the entrepreneurial opportunity that is created from these knowledge spillovers. Empirical evidence therefore has significant practical and scientific implications.