The Performance of University Spin-Offs: The Impact of Entrepreneurial Capabilities and Social Networks of Founding Teams during Start-Ups

Objectives: University spin-offs have increasingly received attention from academia, governments, and policymakers because they not only generate new innovations, productivity, and jobs the regional economies but also significantly improve university productivity and creativity (Hayter, 2013, Urbano and Guerrero, 2013). However, a lack of understanding of the contribution made by a founding team to a spin-off’s performance still remains within current studies. Employing a resource-based view theory and social networks approach, this paper addresses this gap by exploring university spin-offs in Spain. Prior work: University spin-off studies have concentrated on analysing entrepreneurial business models (Ndonzuau et al., 2002, Vohora et al., 2004b, Bower, 2003, Mets, 2010) to understand how the commercialization of research is undertaken to create a university spin-off. University spin-offs were also been analysed from the perspective of a university’s capabilities (Powers and McDougall, 2005), or capabilities and social networks of an established spin-off instead of the founding teams (Walter et al., 2006). Moreover, Vohora et al. (2004a) and Shane (2004) have suggested founders need to build capable teams, which must have entrepreneurial capabilities and qualitative social networks, to create effective university spin-offs. Both entrepreneurial capability and social network theory have been studied in prior entrepreneurship research, but have received less attention within the context of the university spin-offs (Gonzalez-Pernia et al., 2013). Approach: Utilising an internet-based survey, this paper explores entrepreneurial capabilities and social networks of founding teams in Spanish university spin-offs using quantitative data analysis. Basing upon resource-based view theory of Barney (1991) to study entrepreneurial capabilities of the founding teams, the research employ entrepreneurial technology, strategy, human capital, organizational viability, and commercial resources (see Vohora et al., 2004a). To study social networks of a founding team, we employ the conceptual model of Hoang and Antoncic (2003) that divides networks into three components: structure, governance, and content. Results and implications: The results from an examination of the sample of 181 Spanish university spin-offs empirically demonstrate that by exploiting social networks a founding team can improve its entrepreneurial capabilities, which in turn enhance its spin-off’s performance. By employing the work of Vohora et al. (2004a) and Shane (2004), this paper constructs a model in which entrepreneurial capabilities play a mediate role between social networks and spin-off’s performance. Thus, the paper has implications for universities in training and policy development to support spin-off’s activity. Value: This study addresses some fundamental questions to contribute to the theory-based understanding of university spin-offs: How do entrepreneurial capabilities of founding teams influence the performance of university spin-offs? How do social networks of founding teams contribute to the process of the university spin-offs

Developing indicators to measure Technology Institutes` performance

Technology institutes (TIs) are non-profit innovation and technology organisations aimed to encourage competitiveness of firms. They are a key organisation in the Spanish National Innovation System because of their size and closeness to the productive sector. Despite this, there is a lack of studies trying to measure their performance and its determinants. This work sheds some light on this. We study the influence of operative, financial, organisational, relational and general variables on three measures of results: selffinance, impact and added value. Our conclusions show the relevance of this approach and are confirmed by grouping TIs according to their service supply characteristics.Publicad

The Effectiveness of University Knowledge Spill-Overs: Performance Differences between University Spin-Offs and Corporate Spin-Offs

While much prior research has focused upon how the Technology Transfer Offices and other contextual characteristics shape the level of university spin-offs (USO), there is little research on entrepreneurial potential among individual academics, and to the best of our knowledge, no comparative studies with other types of spin-offs exist to date. In this paper we suggest that knowledge transfer from academic research may flow indirectly to entrepreneurship by individuals with a university education background who become involved in new venture creation by means of corporate spin-offs (CSO) after gaining industrial experience, rather than leaving university employment to found a new venture as an academic spinoff. In fact, the commercial knowledge gained by industry experience is potentially more valuable for entrepreneurial performance compared to the academic knowledge gained by additional research experience at a university. This leads us to posit that not only will the average performance of CSOs be higher than comparable USOs, but the gains from founder’s prior experiences will also be higher among CSOs. We investigate these propositions in a comparative study tracking the complete population of USOs and CSOs among the Swedish knowledge-intensive sectors between 1994 and 2002.Spill-Overs

Spin-offs and Start-ups in The Netherlands

After a decade of widespread attention for the entrepreneurial efforts of individuals, the focus seems to partly shift to companies and their contribution to new firm formation. Especially the works of Klepper (2001) have provided a solid ground for research on the entrepreneurial activities of companies. He claims that these efforts are particularly of interest in the explanation of the evolution of economic clusters, such as the Detroit automobile industry and Silicon Valley. The evidence, brought forward by Klepper, is based on case studies and a thorough analysis of very inaccessible and complicated sources. For a structural and comparative analysis of regions and their spin-off activities an easy applicable and accessible measure is needed. In the Netherlands, the Chamber of Commerce has developed an indicator, which distinguishes between individual start-ups and ?other founding?. The latter group is designed to cover spin-off activities. Figures are published from 1995 onwards. Much in line with common studies of regional variance in entrepreneurial activity, this paper presents an explanatory model for the spatial differences in occurrence of spin-offs, based on the data from the CoC?s business register. A model is defined on the one hand to explain regional differences in spin-offs, which provides a basis for structural research on cluster formation and the role of spin-offs in this process. On the other hand, it shows the differences between individual based start-ups and company driven endeavours. It is argued that these two groups of new firms are essentially distinct, and therefore cannot be explained by one and the same model. Reference: Klepper, S.J. (2001). The evolution of the U.S. automobile industry and Detroit as its capital. Carnegy Mellon University, Pittsburg Keywords: Spin-offs, spatial variances

Czech machinery cluster and its role in sustainable development of Moravian-Silesian enterprises during the post-transformation era

The paper intends to contribute to the field of geographical economics by an extensive questionnaire survey carried out in Moravian-Silesian region, which represents one of territories of traditional industry in the Czech Republic. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and assess the co-operation among enterprises, educational institutions, and public administration from the perspective of sustainability in the Moravian-Silesian region during its post-transformation era. The article deals specifically with the Czech machinery cluster. The research question that lies behind the survey is as follows: Is the co-operation of entities present in the Czech machinery cluster beneficial to the parties involved? The contribution of the paper is in uncovering the role of this cluster in the sustainable development of Moravian-Silesian enterprises during post-transformation period. Since the Moravian-Silesian region is a typical old industrial region, which moreover underwent a difficult transformation process, there are numerous peculiarities in functioning of its enterprises. Machinery was traditionally one of the supportive pillars of regional industry and it is not surprising that the machinery cluster was created as the first one. Yet, regional characteristics lie behind specific trajectories towards economic sustainability. The above ways toward economic sustainability differ markedly from the concepts that are in vogue in developed western territories.Web of Science102art. no. 23

Norwegian Innovation and Industrial Structure: Insiders and Outsiders?

We examine the hypothesis that the Norwegian innovation system is locked-in to a specialization pattern of scale dependent, resource intensive industries, in which innovation depends mainly on the in-house activities of (a few) large firms. To this extent, we employ a sectoral empirical analysis using data on industrial dynamics and innovation in the Norwegian economy. Our results indicate that although the Norwegian economy has parts that are resourceand scale dependent, and also sectors in which the market structure is inert and concentrated, these characteristics are not systematically related to the level and nature of innovation activities. Our results indicate that innovation in Norway takes place in two main regimes: a highintensive and a low-intensive regime. This is not correlated systematically with industrial dynamics.

Patterns of innovatin networking in Dutch small firms

Small firms may rely on a variety of network partners, and in various roles, to identify and exploit opportunities for innovation. This paper adds to the literature on innovation networking by developing a typology at the level of innovation objects, rather than at the firm or industry level. �

Universities and the Success of Entrepreneurial Ventures: Evidence from the Small Business Innovation Research Program

There has been little direct, systematic empirical analysis of the role that universities play in enhancing the success of entrepreneurial ventures. We attempt to fill this gap by analyzing data from the SBIR program, a set-aside program that requires key federal agencies (e.g., Department of Defense) to allocate 2.5 percent of their research budget to small firms that attempt to commercialize new technologies. Based on estimation of Tobit and negative binomial regressions of the determinants of commercial success, we find that start-ups with closer ties to universities achieve higher levels of performance.

Examining the Overlapping Traits of Athletes and Entrepreneurs Through a Series of Case Studies

Today’s psychologists have paid close attention to personality and how it can affect many areas of a person’s life. From career success to criminal behavior psychologists continuously are trying to define key characteristics that may be contributing factors in the prediction of future happenings. This paper will look closely at theories regarding personality traits that are key to success. Those traits are identified in eight case studies relating to both entrepreneurial and athletic success with the findings showing a possible link between success and some key traits and an overlap of some traits between athletes and entrepreneurs