Designing Impact Case Studies: Lessons from the SIDREA-CNDCEC joint project on “high-growth start-ups (Gazelles)

Growing attention has been given to the potential and actual “impact” of academic activities and outputs on businesses, communities, and societies. From the perspective of the UK-Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the Italian VQR released by ANVUR, the National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems, designing and undertaking an effective “impact case study” requires a constant and constructive engagement between academics and non-academic actors, such as practitioners and policymakers. However, there is no relevant academic literature or an overall accepted theoretical/normative framework for designing, conducting, and assessing impact cases. To fill this gap, this chapter, which adopts an illustrative case study methodology, presents the example of the impact case study on “Principles, Models, and Financial Accounting Practices for the Startups and the High-Growth Startups (i.e., Gazelles),” promoted by the Gruppo di Studio “Start-ups” of the Italian academic group of the professors of accounting and business economics (SIDREA) and the Italian institute of chartered accountants (CNDCEC). This impact case study is mobilized as an illustrative example of the context, processes, and interactions that occurred in jointly designing a project whose aims is to identify principles, guidelines, and practices for planning, managing, controlling, and evaluating startups and gazelles. We describe the processes and interactions we undertook to design and construct this case study to offer methodological insights into “how” and “why” to undertake an impact case study. From this descriptive-illustrative analysis, we intend to learn some lessons that we draw upon for designing impactful case studies in the future.