Changing the Rules of the Game: The Role of Antifragility in the Survival of Innovative Start-Ups

During Covid-19, some innovative start-ups not only absorbed the shock but also improved afterwards through the development of capabilities related to antifragility. Drawing on the antifragility literature we have selected a set of internal capabilities that influence the survival of start-ups. Then, we applied qualitative benchmarking of the fuzzy-set to examine which interactions between the aforementioned internal capabilities affect the survival of innovative start-ups. We used a unique dataset of 37 innovative start-ups that survived in Italy after the Covid-19 lockdown. Our results suggest the interaction between some specific capabilities (creativity, flexibility and collaboration) are antecedents of antifragility. The interaction between these capabilities enables start-ups to survive during a crisis. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Adopting new technologies during the crisis: An empirical analysis of agricultural sector

Research and development in agricultural sector are becoming a crucial issue, especially to answer to growing global market needs and, in general, for rural innovation development. The innovation process involves stakeholders of all levels and rural development requires both personal farmers' characteristics along with favourable socio-political and infrastructural environment. Many countries and governments have executed innovation projects for agricultural firms, involving a number of actors from the public and private sectors. However, the literature lacks of studies that investigate the identification of the main factors that determine the agricultural entrepreneurs' probability to adopt new technologies during a crisis context. Thus, through the adoption of the Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour, this study aims at filling this lack. More specifically, the exploratory empirical analysis focuses on a sample of 130 agricultural entrepreneurs operating in a rural developing Italian region, during the historical context of global pandemic crisis of COVID-19. The results provided several insights showing the factors that influence the adoption of technologies, such as the Attitude to Environmental-Economic Sustainability and the Planned Behavioural Control. An important role is also assumed by the past farmer's technological experience. The paper offers implications for entrepreneurs and public government. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.