The Italian Startup Ecosystem explained by Emil Abirascid
The quality, the commitment, the creativity, the vision, the skills of the new generation of Italian entrepreneurs are very high even when compared with entrepreneurs of other Countries, plus Italians have a unique sense to match tradition and innovation and this is a key aspect considering that technologies are changing in every single sector |
The Italian startup ecosystem is living his biggest challenge: to become more mature, more solid and more international. In Italy, as in most of other Countries around the world, the new generation of entrepreneurs is gaining importance both because today, as never before in the history of humankind, it is possible to create a new company and because the wind of innovation is blowing stronger every day.
The quality, the commitment, the creativity, the vision, the skills of the new generation of Italian entrepreneurs are very high even when compared with entrepreneurs of other Countries, plus Italians have a unique sense to match tradition and innovation, and this is a key aspect considering that technologies are changing every single sector, even the ones we used to consider the most steady and traditional. So today we talk about the tech applied to everything: biotech, fin-tech, fashion-tech, food-tech, agro-tech, travel-tech, commerce-tech, etc. The availability of new technologies is not just changing the way we create, buy, use, share products and services, but is also changing the paradigms of the basic social and economic rules. New models are arising, they are based mostly on distributed organizations and leveraging on exponential growth. This means that whoever want to launch a startup today must be aware not only of the short term impact and opportunities that are on the table, but also be able to foresee the future, reading the actual signs that are saying to us how paradigms are changing, such as the sharing or circular economy, the benefit corporations, the blockchain approach, the organizations based on holacracy. The best part of the Italian startup ecosystem are the entrepreneurs then, while the critical aspects are related to the excess of bureaucracy and the level of investments, which is still too low compared to other European economies such as France, Germany, United Kingdom or even Spain, and doesn't allow to respond to the request of the market. This means it is time for a quantum leap for the entire ecosystem, that must become more effective in creating value and in innovating the whole economy. In this process a big role must be played, rather than by investors, startups, incubators, accelerators, by large companies and corporations. This because these companies are in the need to accelerate their innovation processes and they can find a perfect match with startups that are fully focused on innovation with very lean organizations, top level talents, and the ability to adapt quickly to the changes of the markets; and because this approach is bi-directional at the same time startups can leverage on the experience, the knowledge, the industrial and financial resources and the well known brands of large companies. This process is also a good way to accelerate the return of the investments for risk capital firms because there are more chances to create profitable exits or to accelerate the growth of startups that can become rapidly scaleups first and then unicorns. Italy today is full of skilled people with the willingness to develop new companies to address the fast changing requests coming for a new generations of customers, both on business to business and business to consumer frameworks. This is a great opportunity also for international investors and corporations that can find in Italy great ideas, great skilled people and great spots for research and development activities aiming at setting up a presence in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean area. Emil Abirascid www.abirascid.com www.startupbusiness.it |