EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

InnovAction is a project by Action Institute, which aims to make policy proposals for the development of the country starting from the experience of the best Italian entrepreneurs in each field. For this purpose, on July, 1 2014, we organized in collaboration with Unicredit a closed round table with top entrepreneurs in the Digital sector and Venture Capitalist experts at Unicredit tower in Milan, with the purpose of drawing from their experiences policy advice for an ecosystem that can sustain growth and the birth of successful international champions.

With this objective, we collected contributions from: Federico Marchetti (founder and CEO of Yoox), Paolo Ainio (founder and CEO of Banzai and founder of Virgilio), Luca Ascani (co-founder and president of Populis), Carlotta de Franceschi (president of Action Institute), Riccardo Donadon (founder and CEO of H-farm), Salvatore Esposito (co-founder and CEO of Populis), Alessandro Fracassi (co-founder and CEO of MutuiOnline), Alberto Genovese (founder of Facile.it), Enrico Gasperini (founder and president of Digital Magics), Vito Lomele (founder of Jobrapido), Cosimo Palmisano (founder and CEO of ECCE Costumer) Franco Petrucci (chief technology officer and founder of Decisyon), Alessandro Piol (co-founder of Vedanta Capital), Diana Saraceni (co-founder and general partner of 360° Capital Partners), Giulio Valiante (founder and CEO of Withfounders), Luca De Biase (Nova, IlSole24Ore) and Paola Garibotti from Unicredit.

The main purpose of this paper is to suggest a set of solutions to accelerate policies for promotion of start-ups policy and encourage the development of successful International champions in the Digital sector. This proposals in particular are meant to be the 2.0 version of all the measures for start-ups contained in the “Crescita Bis” decree of December 2012.

This paper proposes to intervene along three dimensions:

(i) venture capital

(ii) human capital

(iii) digital hubs