Le misure di sostegno alla nuova imprenditorialità. Le buone pratiche su scala europea, con particolare riferimento all’educazione imprenditoriale[Supporting early-stage entrepreneurship]

The connection between the weak performance of the Italian economy and the mechanisms governing the creation and allocation of human capital has been investigated only rarely. This paper argues that the Italian economy faces not just a generic shortage of human capital but a specific shortage of entrepreneurial human capital, which explains the small size of firms and their lack of international competitiveness in high-tech sectors. Robust empirical evidence suggests that education is an important positive determinant of the entrepreneurial performance and, according to some studies, the poor economic performance of the Italian economy in the last 15 years or so can be partly ascribed to entrepreneurial styles and strategies determined by a poor endowment of human capital. AlmaLaurea's surveys on the occupational status of graduates, monitored five year after graduation, show that those graduates that have embraced entrepreneurship as a career choice are more satisfied than their colleagues. On the other hand, they declare that the skills they acquired at university are not as effective as declared by their colleagues with other jobs. Surprisingly, graduates holding a degree in economics do not seem to be very satisfied of their skills. This suggests that very is a need for improving the entrepreneurial skills of graduates not only in non economic-related fields of study). Universities can play a crucial role in fostering graduates’ entrepreneurship through entrepreneurial education and training. The latter should be designed and developed in a more systematic way, both in curricula as well as in extracurricular activities. In this context, the propensity to be involved in a business venture as an occupational option and the capability to do it should not to be related only to the development of the appropriate interdisciplinary skills but also to the improvement of those non cognitive traits and attitudes, i.e. soft skills that can be cultivated through entrepreneurial education. The benefits of entrepreneurial education are not confined to its contribution to the creation of new ventures by graduates but also to the cultivation of an entrepreneurial spirit that can foster university graduates’ employability and their contribution to intrapreneurship (Commissione Europea, 2012; Ferrante e Supino, 2014).