Economy - published on 07 December 2023
Source: press office InfoCamere
There are 1,413 start-ups in the Triveneto, two out of three are based in Veneto. Padua (244 active startups) is confirmed as the queen of innovation in terms of the number of startups in the entire area, Trento (6.9%) has the highest concentration of new capital companies, and Gorizia is the leader in terms of efficiency of invested capital.
A report and an interactive dashboard to learn about and follow the paths of innovative start-ups in the territories that will be unveiled at the presentation event and discussion among the protagonists of the sector on 7 December 2023 at Villa Borromeo, Via della Provvidenza 61, in Sarmeola (Pd).
Padua – 6 December 2023 – The North-Eastern Observatory on the Economy of Innovation NIM, (Numbers Innovation Motion), a project of Galileo Visionary District realised in collaboration with InfoCamere – the company of the Chambers of Commerce for digital innovation- with the contribution of the Chamber of Commerce of Padua is born. NIM allows to transform the data of the most important official business database of the country (the Business Register) into usable information with infographics, comments, analyses and reports, thanks to a web-based platform that can be freely consulted by citizens, businesses, public administrations and the media. A project that has involved, and will involve in the future, businesses and Public Administrations, universities, start-up specialists and representatives of the Venture Capital world in a continuous dialogue on the present and especially the future of our innovative enterprises.
The picture that emerges from the first NIM Report on the Triveneto start-up sector tells of a vital and innovative area of the country. However, there is no shortage of critical elements confirming that the development of new innovative enterprises, the true lifeblood of an area’s economic future, requires constant support, attention and investment capacity.
In absolute terms, there were 1,413 start-ups active in the Northeast as at 30 September 2023, down by 100 compared to December 2022. Of all the start-ups active in the Triveneto region, 903, 63.9% of the total, are based in Veneto. These together recorded revenues of over 156 million euro, about two-thirds (66%) of all start-ups in the Triveneto (236.7 million euro).
At the provincial level, as of 30 September 2023 Padua (244 active startups) is confirmed as the queen of innovation in terms of the number of startups in the entire area, followed by Verona (215) and Trento (158).
On the other hand, if we consider the number of innovative startups in relation to the number of new companies (less than five years old and less than five million in annual turnover) active in the province, Trento ranks first with a ratio of 6.2%.
Finally, when looking at the financial performance of innovative start-ups, the palm of efficiency goes to Gorizia. In the Friulian city, the ratio between the value of production of the last deposited balance sheet and the invested capital reaches 5.5. In Padua, first in the Veneto region, this indicator drops to 4.7, while in Vicenza it stands at 4.4.
Ours is a solid and complex innovation ecosystem, made up of university research centres, some of the most prestigious universities in Europe, and a system of incubators like our Start Cube and highly effective accelerators like Le Village By CA Triveneto, of which Galileo is a partner thanks to the farsighted action of players like the Chamber of Commerce of Padua and Fondazione Cariparo – explains Emiliano Fabris, director of the Pst Galileo Visionary District – And the data prove it, both in terms of the number of companies and performance. But we cannot hide the fact that the start-up system, globally, is going through a difficult season, after the great growth we recorded up to 2021. According to the latest Venture Capital Monitor – VeMTM research report, in Italy, in the first six months of 2023, we saw investments of €511 million in 152 rounds compared to around €1 billion in the 198 rounds in the same six months of 2022. This is a wake-up call that parallels the decline in the number of active start-ups throughout the Triveneto region. But this is precisely what NIM is for: to analyse the phenomena of innovation in their adherence to reality and provide useful tools at all levels to act effectively in support of the territory’s development.
A strategic element of NIM’s work is to offer qualified readings of the data, thanks to a Scientific Committee that includes professors from the University of Padua Francesca Gambarotto and Roberto Antonietti and Obloo-Venture Factory managing partner Nicola Redi.
In addition to drawing up analytical reports, one of the objectives of the NIM Observatory is to develop – through the organisation of dedicated events – an operational debate capable of proposing concrete points of view and operational solutions based on a scientific observation of reality and its context. The first of these events will be held tomorrow 7 December 2023 at Villa Borromeo in Via della Provvidenza, 61 in Sarmeola (Pd). A meeting to present the project, but also and above all an opportunity to discuss data and trends in the sector, which will be attended by the main protagonists of institutions, entrepreneurial innovation and start-ups in the area.
With this new Observatory of analysis and in-depth analysis on the business world of the Northeast, with a particular focus on data on innovative start-ups, our territory – says the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Padua, Antonio Santocono – is enriched with a further tool to establish objective and up-to-date benchmarks and parameters, to collect information in an orderly manner and inserted into logical schemes, thanks to the valuable data processed by the Business Registry. This new approach will help us as a Chamber of Commerce to better govern and direct the future and to understand more specifically on which strategic areas to focus projects and resources available to help the business system grow and compete. Especially at the level of the digital ecosystem, the role of data is increasingly central and represents the engine of transformation in the digital economy. The challenge is also linked to the desire to pool resources and create synergies to put in place all the tools needed to make our territory more competitive and thus more attractive to possible national and even foreign investors.
Thanks to the support of the Padua Chamber of Commerce, which has believed in the project from the outset, and to InfoCamere’s extraordinary wealth of information and expertise – explains Paolo Giopp, president of the Pst Galileo Visionary District – the Galileo Park can offer the economic system of reference an excellent tool that allows for a precise and in-depth reading of the main phenomena linked to technological, environmental and organisational innovation in our economic system. It is a valuable tool for public decision-makers, but also for entrepreneurs and the entire population, who will thus be able to read the phenomenon of innovation in the area as it appears in statistical reality, regardless of commonplaces and hearsay. However, numbers often lend themselves to partial and misleading readings, which is why we have chosen to accompany the data with the interpretation of a Scientific Committee made up of university professors and experts in the sector. But in order to make the data usable for all, in a fully democratic key, Galileo brings its creative capacity to bear in a data design work that offers simple, appealing and intuitive representation models in line with the research that is being conducted throughout the western world in this field.
Official and certified data, such as those from the Register of Companies managed by InfoCamere, are indispensable lenses not only for establishing the state of a production system at a given moment, but above all for reconstructing the dynamics and laying the foundations for intercepting possible lines of evolution – explains the director general of Infocamere, Paolo Ghezzi – When the subject of the analysis is innovation and how it takes root in the territories, crosses them and contaminates them, then the value of certain, updated and punctual data down to municipal level is decisive for designing business strategies or implementing effective public initiatives. These are the objectives for which the NIM Observatory was created.
Some of the main findings of the NIM Report on innovative start-ups in Triveneto as at 30 September 2023
