View article

Innovative start-ups can create and shape new industries and generate considerable economic and societal impacts. Accordingly, a variety of policy initiatives are aimed at promoting the establishment, growth and impact of innovative start-ups. Designing such policies is a challenging task, because most start-ups fail. In addition, only a small share of those start-ups will ultimately prove to be innovative, and very few of those will eventually become high impact firms. Hence, effective policies require a better understanding of the processes by which innovative start-ups are formed, developed and create impact, as well as of the heterogeneous nature inherent to innovative start-ups along with their development trajectory. This article reviews 39 policy initiatives from around the world and classifies their approaches to the phenomenon of innovative start-ups. By relying on insights from the papers mentioned in this …