Human Capital Qualification and Resilience of High-growth Start-ups (Gazelles). COVID-19 as a Natural Experiment

This chapter shows how the human capital endowment of high-growth start-ups, also known as “gazelle companies”, indirectly expressed by the ability of their employees to create added value, positively affects their resilience to external shocks of an exceptional nature and significant, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This was observed by companies born in Italy in 2014 and became gazelles by 2019 within 3 years of achieving this status, during which the pandemic has seriously threatened the survival of businesses in all sectors and countries. This study, therefore, considered the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment. Contrary to our expectations, the intangible asset endowment, another intangible resource that human capital is a proxy of knowledge investments by enterprises, has not positively affected the resilience of gazelles in such a difficult period. This result is even more surprising when you consider that, on the contrary, the endowment of total assets increased the resilience of these companies during the pandemic. These findings from our study are important because they increase knowledge of the factors that can contribute to the survival of high-growth start-ups in difficult periods, filling a gap in the literature. However, it is important to note that the results refer to gazelles born in Italy and belonging to the cohort studied (2014–2019) but not necessarily to those born in different years and operating in various countries.