This article reports the analysis of case studies of portfolio entrepreneurs that suggests that one of the main reasons for the formation and expansion of business groups is the need to create an entrepreneurial team, which is achieved by giving minority shares in the new ventures to others, mainly former employees. This enhances entrepreneurs' ability to grow and diversify the businesses under their control without compromising their ownership control of the overall business group. The article identifies and discusses the different types of entrepreneurial teams developed by portfolio entrepreneurs: joint ventures with established entrepreneurs, employee involvement, and intrapreneurship. The latter two types were specifically interesting in studying situations where there was a dominant entrepreneur and associate entrepreneurs. The article enhances the theoretical and empirical understanding of how growth is achieved in the small firms sector through business group formation, and sheds insights on how entrepreneurial team dynamics operate in multiple business contexts.

Recent empirical research has demonstrated that the growth process of entrepreneurial firms is frequently achieved through the formation of business groups: i.e. a set of companies run by the same entrepreneur (or entrepreneurial team). This has been hypothesised as result of a growth process by diversification of the original activity. This entrepreneurial growth process offers an alternative explanation for the formation of business Groups, than that arising from managerial efficiency and expediency. The main aim of the article is to explore group formation through entrepreneurial diversification using a sample of high growth entrepreneurial firms. The analysis demonstrates that the running of a group of companies by the same entrepreneur is not only induced by the geographical extension of their operation and by diversification but also by the differentiation policy aimed at serving different market segments within the same sector. This seems to contrast with the diversification policy and organisational setting of large, managerial firms Copyright Springer 2005business groups, diversification, entrepreneurship, habitual entrepreneurs, L2, M13,

Several recent studies have investigated the relationship between the geographic concentration of production and vertical integration, based on the hypothesis that the spatial agglomeration of firms in the same industry facilitates input procurement, thereby reducing the degree of vertical integration. This article contributes to this debate in two ways: first, we focus on interindustry vertical integration, and second, we consider the effects on vertical integration of unrelated and vertically related variety at the local level. The latter was measured using information from input-output tables and captured the opportunities for outsourcing within the local system. A data set of 24,663 Italian business groups in 2001 was used to estimate Tobit models to investigate the influence of vertically related variety and other agglomeration forces on the degree of vertical integration of groups. We found that vertical integration is influenced by industry specialization at the local level and that higher vertically related variety reduces the need for firms to integrate activities, since they have more opportunities to acquire intermediate goods and services within the local system. We analyze the manufacturing and different macroareas and show that this relationship is also influenced by technology and differences in the organization of economic activities at the local level.e cge_1156 255..277 255 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 88(3):255-277.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the present situation and recent evolution of entrepreneurship education in Italian universities and to discuss whether these courses and curricula match the demand for entrepreneurial competences.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical analysis is based on a census of entrepreneurship courses and curricula run by universities. The information collected through the internet refers to the academic years 2003‐2004 and 2009‐2010.FindingsCompared with the situation observed in the USA and in other European countries, entrepreneurship education in Italy is rather “underdeveloped”. Only a few universities have courses or specific curricula dedicated to entrepreneurship. The courses are concentrated within business faculties while very few exist in science and engineering faculties. The slow pace with which Italian universities are keeping up with the global trend in entrepreneurship education at university level seems in vivid contrast with the need for the Italian economy to change its industry structure from the so‐called “traditional” to “high‐tech” sectors. The paper discusses the reasons for this situation.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper does not evaluate the impact of entrepreneurship education. A suggestion for future research could be to analyze the role of these courses in encouraging entrepreneurial activity of students.Practical implicationsEntrepreneurship education at university level can play an important role in the Italian economic system, fostering the creation of new business in knowledge‐intensive sectors.Social implicationsThe exploratory analysis of the state of entrepreneurship education in Italy suggests the need to develop these courses and spread the presence, especially in the science and engineering universities.Originality/valueThe paper covers a lack of research on the attitude of higher education institutions towards entrepreneurship education in Italy.

Using a large unbalanced panel dataset of more than 12,000 Italian manufacturing firms for the period 1999-2007, this paper investigates the role of geographic concentration and related variety on firms' total factor productivity (TFP). The main idea is that diversification-captured by a measure of vertically related variety-promotes firm innovativeness and, consequently, productivity, but when the technology has been consolidated, firms join specialized clusters that enhance efficiency. Our results suggest that the effect on firms' TFP of geographic concentration is stronger than that of related variety. We also confirm previous findings on the relevance of agglomeration forces for small firms compared with medium and large firms, where these agglomerative forces do not seem to influence TFP.