Policy, entrepreneurship, creativity and sustainability: The case of ‘Principi Attivi’ (‘Active Ingredients’) in Apulia Region (southern Italy)

The present work assesses the case of ‘Principi Attivi’ (‘Active Ingredients’). This is a policy initiative of the Apulia Region in southern Italy to support new start-ups of young entrepreneurs. Since 2010, the year of green revolution 2.0, entrepreneurship remains active and competitive in the globalised world through sustainable innovation initiatives. If innovation is the successful implementation of new ideas, then creativity can be seen as the seed of innovation. Inspired by these arguments and the case of Principi Attivi (‘Active Ingredients’), the present work adds new insights to the current debate and investigates the relationships between creativity and sustainability from supply and demand side perspectives. In particular, this paper addresses the following aims: i) On the demand side, we question how creativity relates to sustainability through entrepreneurship. To reach this aim we employ a cluster analysis and a network meta-analysis (NMA) approach to determine the existence of latent relationships between creativity and sustainability within the project proposals submitted to ‘Principi Attivi’ (‘Active Ingredients’). ii) To understand, on the demand side, what are the main factors affecting the allocation of regional funding for young entrepreneurs; and iii) To determine, on the supply side, to what extent creativity and sustainability proposals influence the outcome of the selection process. To reach aims ii) and iii) we use a probabilistic model to infer data on the probability of project proposals to be admitted to regional funding. Main results suggests: (i) the existence of latent relationships between creativity and sustainability in business initiatives; (ii) the potential propensity of the decision maker to support ‘green’ entrepreneurship and larger groups of young entrepreneurs; (iii) the limited influence (almost non-existent) on the decision maker of creativity and sustainability proposals during the evaluation process. The present work point us to assert the persistence of asymmetric information between the young entrepreneur and the policy maker. Adequate initiatives are needed to close this gap to help foster creativity and sustainability-driven entrepreneurship.