In Sardinia there is a start up company every 9 .360 inhabitants. This is what emerges from the periodic report published by Infocamere, updated last month, which contains the complete list of companies registered in the special section of the business register dedicated to innovative start-ups. The island is positioned in the second half of the ranking compared to other Italian regions, with an innovative start-up ratio to ordinary companies of 1 to 1647.
In the last five years, however, the trend is growing. In 2013, the first year of the existence of the special register of innovative start-ups, there were 9 new Sardinian technological enterprises, in the biennium 2014/2015 they had become 71, in 2016 they were already 112 and at the end of 2017 they became 156. In the first months in 2018 there were already 20 new incorporations.
63% of the island start-ups are based in the Cagliari area, which comprises the metropolitan city and the province of southern Sardinia. Sassari follows with 34% of the new businesses. On the other side, innovative companies are not very present in the provinces of Oristano and Nuoro: 2% and 4% respectively. The territorial distribution is explained in part by the demographic density and partly by the presence of business support facilities, such as accelerators and incubators, including those connected to the two Sardinian universities.
The driving sector is ICT, which includes 88 companies, equal to 50% of the total. The sector of Scientific Research and Development, follows, counting19 companies, equal to 10.8%. Among the other sectors, the consulting activities - from company management to advertising, from market research to engineering and architecture - show a further 10.8%.
In recent years, the Sardinia Region has launched a series of financial support tools aimed at business development and dedicated to all companies in the area. But a part from these lines of funding, there are also some calls specifically targeted to innovative start-ups, such as the Insight and Voucher Start Up programmes of Sardegna Ricerche.