The Need for Innovation Support Services unraveled. The ³case of New Technology Based Firms

New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs) are considered to contribute significantly to the economy. As a result, these firms have received extensive attention from academics over the past decades. Given that NTBFs are faced with many challenges and liabilities, the academic literature has tried to identify how public policy measures could help to overcome challenges related to innovation, amongst others by identifying NTBFs’ needs for innovation support services. Our study contributes to this stream of research by exploring the determinants of the need for innovation support services. We find that technology-related services are highly needed by VC-backed companies, whereas market-related services are searched for by NTBFs in an early development stage pursuing a strategy of playing on the product market. Further, financial-related services were needed by NTBFs with a high level of informal protection, in an early development stage and targeting at playing on a technology market. Finally, soft services were looked for by teams with high levels of technical human capital, in an early development stage, and pursuing a product market strategy.