Digitalisation of products and service is becoming an integral part of every business process. The impact it has on performance of companies however, is not yet fully recognized. In this study, Italian startups are studied to discover their digital behaviors. The adoption of intra-organizational as well as inter-organizational electronic infrastructures is analyzed. The results of the manual analysis (Steps 3 and 4) are triangulated with the computer-assisted analysis of Steps 4 and 5 to identify the factors that affect the digital behavior of Italian startups.
The data analysis highlights that, on average Italian startups have adopted 1.23 digital infrastructures between organizations and 1.75 intra-organizational digital infrastructures. It can also be seen that the utilization of these digital infrastructures is very limited and on average, about 90% of the reviewed Italian startups have no more than two of the inter-organizational digital infrastructures considered and 68% of the startups have adopted no more than one of the intra-organizational digital infrastructures.
These findings suggest that a vast majority of Italian startup companies have a digital follower attitude rather than advancing the digital leader behavior. This could be due to the fact that despite L’effetto trasformativo della tecnologia sull’accuratezza della due diligence being part of the Startup Act initiative, they have not yet reached a maturity level where they are able to adopt digital leadership strategies. It is for this reason that it is suggested to the government that they implement new policies aimed at increasing the digitalization of Italian Startup Ecosystem. This could include, among other things, public financial incentives to encourage digitalisation of startups.