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The authors investigate whether matchings in equity crowdfunding are more likely to happen if homophily exists between investors and investees. They focus on gender, age and geographical proximity as crucial dimensions of similarity among individuals and thus of homophily. Furthermore, they investigate whether the effect of homophily depends on the risk of opportunism, which investors allegedly attribute to proponents basing on their area of residence.

The authors analyze a hand-collected database of 13 equity crowdfunding campaigns launched by Italian innovative start-ups from January 2013 to June 2016, which includes information about 384 equity crowdfunding investments carried out by 361 different investors.

The authors find a significant effect of geographical proximity and age similarity in explaining the probability that an investor finances a campaign. Moreover, these effects are particularly relevant if the proponent is located in areas characterized by a high risk of opportunistic behavior. Interestingly enough, they do not detect any significant effect related to gender.

In this paper, the authors have the unique opportunity to analyze a whole market (the Italian market) during three years, from inception (2013–2016), and to collect the identities of the investors in all successful campaigns.

Despite evaluating the performance of university-industry alliances being extremely important, scholars have not developed any structured and commonly accepted systems of indicators aimed at measuring the results of these collaborations. In this article, the aim is to review the literature on the evaluation of the performance of university-industry alliances and to identify a series of issues that future studies on this topic should take into account.

The paper opts for a literature review on university-industry collaborations. The review is based on papers in management, economics, and organization science. Systems of indicators to evaluate the performance of these collaborations are discussed. Directions for further research are proposed.

The literature review on firm-industry collaborations highlights a large number of contributions on the topic. However, it shows that there is still room for further inquiry on systems of indicators to evaluate the performance of these collaborations.

The literature review offers a good guideline to researchers intending to study the performance of industry-university collaborations. The discussion on the system of indicators paves the way to further empirical research on the topic.

The authors are confident that the paper has interesting practical implications. Indeed, it is a valuable guideline for policymakers, university managers, and entrepreneurs interested in evaluating the performance of industry-university collaborations.

Industry collaborations are the third mission of university systems. When this mission is accomplished in a proper manner, it benefits firms, universities, and society at large.

The paper adds to the debate on university-industry collaborations by offering literature on the topic with a particular emphasis on an under-researched theme: systems of indicators to evaluate the performance of these collaborations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent and under which conditions R&D projects benefit from team members’ participation in spontaneous and work-related communities of practice (CoPs).

This is a quantitative empirical study. R&D projects are the unit of analysis. Data are collected through interviews to 121 informants who are members of 60 R&D projects and participants in 195 CoPs.

The participation of project team members in work-related CoPs positively affects the R&D project performance. This positive effect applies also to radically innovative projects. The diversity in the institutional affiliation of CoPs members is also highly significant and positively correlated with the project performance.

The paper considers only work-related CoPs, thus neglecting the knowledge transacted through other types of CoPs.

Practitioners should support the autonomous participation of project team members to spontaneous and work-related CoPs that cut across the organizational boundaries. Team leaders may enhance team innovative capabilities and performance by ensuring diversity of knowledge and skills from CoPs whose members work for institutions that differ from each other.

First, this study provides quantitative evidence of the CoPs ability to support innovation. Second, this research is focused on spontaneous and work-related CoPs within business environments. Third, this study does not analyze CoPs performance, but it postulates a connection between innovative organizational units (i.e. R&D projects) and spontaneous CoPs that cut across the firms’ boundaries.

The aim of this research is to contribute to the existing literature about the entrepreneurial conditions in crowd-based contexts by describing how different European countries regulate equity crowdfunding market in order to incentive the investments and protect investors.

Based on a legal acts' analysis, we conduct a qualitative study comparing the crowdfunding regulation addressed to investors. In particular, we focus our analysis on the European countries with the highest concentration of crowdfunding platforms (i.e. the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain).

The results show that some countries, such as the UK, Germany and France, present an investor-oriented approach based on non-restrictive regulation, while other countries, such as Spain and Italy, have a restrictive approach that protects investors excessively and discourages them. In particular, the case study of France shows how the introduction of unrestricted regulation can produce positive effects on the volume of crowdfunding transactions.

The paper is addressed to investors, policymakers and intermediaries (platforms) to help the first in orienting themselves between the different crowdfunding regulations and the latter in aligning and orchestrating rules and norms.

This is the first study that analyses the role of investor-oriented regulations in the promotion of entrepreneurship through the identification of four key factors to monitor equity crowdfunding regulations.