An online showcase in two languages, free and customizable to make your business 2.0 idea known. And #ItalyFrontiers, the new institutional platform available from today on the site http://startup.registroimprese.it for Italian startups and innovative SMEs.
The result of a collaboration between the Ministry of Economic Development, Young Entrepreneurs of Confindustria and Unioncamere, the platform, created by InfoCamere (the company that manages the information assets of the Chambers of Commerce), was created with the aim of enhancing and give international visibility to Italian companies who have taken up the challenge of innovation.
The platform will combine the data available in the special sections of the Business Register dedicated to innovative startups and SMEs - already subject to the advertising regime and updated weekly - with a new, rich set of information entered voluntarily by companies with a digital signature. Each company will thus have its own dedicated and customizable form within which insert a self-descriptive tag (e.g. #Cleantech, #InternetOfThings, #BigData, expressing the link with the most recent trends on the innovation market), insert a presentation video, describe the team's skills, provide information on the level of development achieved and on the type of product or service offered, indicate the reference markets and links to social profiles, etc.
Through an internal search engine, startups and innovative SMEs can be identified by the user - be it a traditional company interested in innovating in a specific sector or an Italian or foreign investor - according to his specific needs: innovative companies they can be filtered by business sector, geographical area, size class (in terms of turnover, capitalization and employees), as well as according to the amount of any financing requirement. The new space will be able to accompany innovative startups and SMEs throughout their entire life cycle: from the start-up phase to the strengthening phase, up to the meeting with both public and private, Italian and foreign lenders.
"#ItalyFrontiers is much more than a simple showcase: it represents a real tool for creating business connections and collaboration on innovation in the entrepreneurial fabric and for stimulating new opportunities along the production chains" he commented Stephen Firpo, DG for Industrial Policy, Competitiveness and SMEs del Ministry of Economic Development. "From the mere completion of a bureaucratic fulfilment, the registration in the special sections of the Register of IEnterprises dedicated to startups and innovative SMEs are themselves transformed into an additional service for companies: an opportunity to allow our innovative entrepreneurship system to grow and make itself known".
"Companies poorly connected to each other and to the network is an idea of the past that strongly penalizes Italy's incredible productive resources - he says Marco Gay, President of the Young Entrepreneurs of Confindustria – #ItalyFrontiers finally overcomes this idea and gives the Italian production system a tool to integrate traditional manufacturing with innovative and digital companies. The new platform favors the contamination between the historic brands of our entrepreneurship and the excellent products of all our SMEs, the heritage that has made Made in Italy great in the world with the potential of new businesses that will make it run again. It's an opportunity not only for those who do business, but to spread the idea that Italian industry hasn't stopped at the shed, on the contrary, it has a modern and digitized face".
“For innovative Italian companies – underlined the General Manager of InfoCamere Paolo Ghezzi – this portal means having a free online space, an open door to the future and thus the opportunity to be more competitive on the market. The initiative responds to the need, which is increasingly felt at this moment, to provide concrete tools to support the daily business activity that Italian companies strongly need”.
“Innovation is the engine of development. Feeding the factory of creative ideas is therefore essential to accelerate the modernization process underway in our country". That's what the claims president of Unioncamere, Ivan Lo Bello, according to which "today the ecosystem of startups and innovative SMEs still represents a small reality of our productive fabric, but it expresses an enormous potential that we want to help bring out also through this initiative born from the collaboration between institutions and the business world in support the competitiveness of our companies".
On November 9, 4.824 innovative startups and 69 innovative SMEs were active in Italy. From a geographical point of view, the regions with the highest presence of innovative startups are Lombardy (1.047), Emilia Romagna (554), Lazio (473), Veneto (361) and Piedmont (333). Among the provinces, Milan stands out (704), Rome (405), Turin (249), Bologna (149) and Naples (147). Looking at the value of production, 6% of startups with deposited balance sheets have a turnover of more than 500 euros.
In terms of employment, considering the period September 2014-June 2015, the number of people, employees and shareholders, involved overall in innovative startups recorded an increase of 64%, going from just over 13 to almost 22 (+4.891 employees and +16.861 shareholders). In absolute terms, the sector that most attracts startuppers is that linked to software production and IT consultancy, where there are 1.453 companies equal to 30,1% of the total innovative startups, immediately followed by research and development (743 units, 15,4%).
With the company Growth Decree 2.0, at the end of 2012, Italy adopted an organic strategy aimed at favoring all new innovative companies, regardless of the sector of activity, at every stage of their development path. With the Investment Compact, at the beginning of 2015 the main concessions already
