Knowledge and cultural diversity in entrepreneurship: untangling the relationship

Alessandra Colombelli (), Anna D’Ambrosio and Valentina Meliciani
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Alessandra Colombelli: Politecnico di Torino
Anna D’Ambrosio: Politecnico di Torino
Valentina Meliciani: Politecnico di Torino

Eurasian Business Review, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, No 6, 175-204

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the role of cultural diversity and local knowledge stocks for entrepreneurship, focusing on the interplay between the two. We consider the Italian case, where immigration is comparatively low-skilled and originating largely from less advanced economies. Focusing separately on high-tech and low-tech entrepreneurship, we document the coexistence of heterogeneous effects of diversity for entrepreneurship. We find that cultural diversity promotes high-tech entrepreneurship only by high levels of knowledge stocks. In contrast, cultural diversity has a direct, positive effect on low-tech entrepreneurship that is negatively moderated by knowledge. We interpret these findings as the result of two different effects of diversity: diversity promotes high-tech entrepreneurship providing heterogeneous perspectives and evaluations of business opportunities; at the same time, it increases taste heterogeneity, offering low-tech business opportunities to necessity entrepreneurs which become less and less appealing as the knowledge stock of the region increases.

Keywords: Cultural diversity; Knowledge stock; Knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship; High-tech entrepreneurship; Necessity entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s40821-025-00299-6

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