Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

This work investigates how knowledge is organised during the process of development of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). The existing literature on entrepreneurship lacks accurate analysis of the processes that lead an idea of business to become an established firm. The present paper seeks to move one step towards filling this gap, by dynamically investigating the process development of a self-contained population of 76 NTBFs in the Northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. This work studies how knowledge is organised by firms and how such configurations change during the development process. By clustering the firms in similar organisational configurations at three different points in time, the results show that it is possible to observe that firms develop along different, sometimes overlapping paths. Cluster analysis findings are moreover enriched by some interviews aimed at understanding how the process took place in its specific dynamics. The aim of this work is twofold: on the one hand it tries to shed light on the dynamics of the entrepreneurial process and on the other hand it put forward some policy implications.