Which are worthy? Achieving legitimation for innovative projects in the eyes of knowledgeable audiences

Legitimacy is a key issue for startup projects, helping innovative ideas and potential ventures to achieve social and financial support from external stakeholders. When participating to competitive contests, startup projects need to achieve legitimacy and be considered appropriate entities by a jury of experts, who represent a knowledgeable and competent audience. In this study, we aim at investigating which elements characterizing startup projects are correlated with higher probability for the projects to be legitimated by knowledgeable audiences. We explore this issue by building on a dataset of 124 projects submitted to the BiUnicrowd contest (2018-2021) organized by the University of Milano- Bicocca. We discuss our results and suggest contributions to literature on category dynamics and entrepreneurship, also offering some insights in terms of implications for managers.