Venture Capitalists and value creation. The role of informal investors in the growth of smaller European firms.

In the last few decades, the innovation process has involved research systems, production systems, and governmental/institutional systems (Etzkowitz and Leydesrdoff, 1998, 2000; Fagerberg et al., 2005; Chesbrough, 2006). In this new context, both formal and informal investors - banks, business angel investors, venture capitalists, and corporate venture capitalists - play an important role. The aim of this paper is to analyse the particular role of venture capitalists (henceforth, VCs) in the innovation system, with a specific focus on new, small, innovative firms in the European context. This research is based on secondary data (Boston Consulting Group, 2015; DealRoom, 2018a, 2018b). The paper can be defined as a descriptive paper, and it attempts to illustrate a phenomenon. The limitations of the paper are a consequence of its very nature, i.e., the fact that it is largely conceptual and based on a secondary data.