Student and Graduate Entrepreneurship in Italy - Report 2020

Abstract

In recent years, the role of companies started by university students has generated considerable interest. Iconic companies such as Dell, Yahoo!, Google and Dropbox have seen an increase in attention, as have their founders’ stories. This has encouraged universities to increase their efforts to promote entrepreneurship. For this reason, the AlmaLaurea Interuniversity Consortium—working with the Department of Management at the University of Bologna as well as Unioncamere—conducted the first nationwide study aimed at documenting the entrepreneurial endeavors of university students and graduates over a twenty-year period in Italy. This study uses data retrieved from the AlmaLaurea database, which includes characteristics of the 2,891,980 graduates who obtained a degree from an Italian university from 2004 to 2018. This was combined with data on the 236,362 companies they have founded and the 68,852 companies in which they hold equity shares. The majority of these endeavors began from 1995 to 2019. In other words, they did not begin exclusively after graduation; some were undertaken during university or even before. Information on the graduates was taken from the AlmaLaurea database. Information regarding companies comes from the Unioncamere and AIDA Bureau van Dijk databases; the latter collects information on corporations operating in Italy.

Keywords: student and graduate entrepreneurship; new ventures; start-up

JEL Classification: M13; I23