The role of soft loans in the growth of innovative companies: focusing of emerging issues

In this paper we analyse the role of soft loans in supporting the innovation processes by innovative companies operating in the province of Frosinone (central Italy). The analysis carried out in this paper is based on two dimensions: the first refers to companies' performances during the period 2010 to 2014; the second includes a questionnaire aimed at generating the company profile of each company participating in the investigation. The main findings of the research concern the preference of the companies for financial sources coming from investments funds and their scarce interest for the soft loans instruments, mainly due to the bureaucratic difficulties and the lack of an effective network between the public institutions of the area enrolled to support the innovation and the entrepreneurial development.