La fruizione dei servizi per l’incentivazione agli start-up nella Provincia di Roma: fra governance locale e caratteristiche dei target della politica

The paper aims at analysing the experience of a particular agency which provides information, guidance and services in order to help people in making up their business plans. These are addressed to get financial benefits to start up new small enterprices (self-employment). The study basically concerns two topics: 1) the governance processes and 2) the profiles of the targets. The first one belongs to a typical issue that has been studied over the last years throughout the European Union, especially in some contexts like the Italian one, and in the city of Rome in particular, the latter context being dominated by a complexity of actors and of an overlapping system of functions and responsibilities. Based on four years long experience professional work made by the author, the paper points out the increasing awareness of the need to share information between public actors but, at the same time, it points out also the increasing awareness to avoid overlapping functions. However, there might be the risk that this awareness might be used just as a rhetorical tool by some politicians. Another part of the paper is based on an administrative data analysis, which refers to XV Department of the Municipality of Rome and to the main regional agency Bic Lazio. Though these data are far from being satisfactory, there is some evidence that some weak targets (women and young people overall) choose to become self-employed without a real experience. More data about values and attitudes of these people should be available to properly evaluate the policy concerned.