In this paper, we question the implicit assumption that more entrepreneurship drives more innovation and growth, asserting that specific typologies of entrepreneurship are responsible for these phenomena. A growing number of studies has analyzed this relationship while focusing on the overall level of entrepreneurship. This paper exploits recent advancements in measuring the sophistication and connectedness of economic systems, brought by the notions of economic complexity and relatedness, to study the nexus of industrial structure and high-potential forms of entrepreneurship. The present study uses a panel dataset for Italy for the period 2015–2019. The results show a differentiated pattern among the high-potential startups considered, with relatedness and complexity having a positive effect for innovative startups, a negative one for high-growth startups, and no effect for pioneers. These results inform potential entrepreneurs of the importance of analyzing how external conditions can have distinctive effects on the process of opportunity identification among different typologies of high-potential startups.

在本文中，我们质疑更多创业推动更多创新和增长的隐含假设，并断言特定类型的创业是造成这些现象的原因。越来越多的研究分析了这种关系，同时关注创业的整体水平。本文利用经济复杂性和相关性概念带来的衡量经济系统复杂性和连通性的最新进展，来研究产业结构和高潜力创业形式之间的关系。本研究使用 2015-2019 年意大利面板数据集。结果显示，所考虑的高潜力初创企业之间存在差异化模式，相关性和复杂性对创新型初创企业产生积极影响，对于高增长的初创公司来说是负面的，对于先驱者则没有影响。这些结果告诉潜在的企业家，分析外部条件如何对不同类型的高潜力初创企业的机会识别过程产生独特影响的重要性。