What are the trade-offs of academic entrepreneurship? An investigation on the Italian case

This study addresses the following research questions: what happens to the propensity to collaborate with other firms, once the researcher creates her own venture? Do her collaborations decrease or do they grow? These questions have been overlooked by the current literature, even though they carry important policy implications. Our key suggestion is that the effectiveness of a technology transfer tool can be better assessed by taking into account the possible crowding-out effects with other channels of knowledge transfer. We do so for Italy, by comparing the behavior of single researchers, before and after the establishment of their own firm, with the behavior of a control group. We assess whether those academics that founded their own firm significantly change their attitude to perform research collaborations with other firms by means of co-publication and co-patenting. We also verify whether creating a firm has an impact on the overall patenting and publication performance. Our results suggest that there is a negative effect on the overall publishing performance, while the patenting activity does not change significantly. Regarding co-publications, our results confirm the existence of a substitution effect between spin-offs and co-publication with firms, while we observe an increase in the case of co-patenting. A closer look at the data, however, suggests that the latter is mainly triggered by the patenting activity that the researcher performs with his or her own compan

The UBC ecosystem: putting together a comprehensive framework for university-business cooperation

The potential for a functional ‘triple helix’ to contribute to economic development is being increasingly accepted and embraced, particularly the bilateral relationship between higher education institutions (HEIs) and business. However, university-business cooperation (UBC) is still a fragmented and indistinct field of research, and the understanding of UBC remains inadequate since most research is undertaken around specific elements, rather than as an encompassing, overarching and interconnected system. This paper aims fills this gap in the literature by putting the pieces together to create an integrated and comprehensive conceptual UBC framework for HEIs, the UBC Ecosystem. The framework illustrates the components present in the UBC environment for HEIs, such as inputs, activities, outcomes, outputs, impacts, supporting mechanisms, circumstances and context, specifying a wide range of sub-elements for each of them. In doing so, this paper makes a strong theoretical contribution with the creation of a conceptual framework, highlighting the more important elements and their interrelations as well as suggesting future research. Additionally, the paper makes a practical contribution, establishing a common UBC schema for HEI managers and policymakers to make strategic and operative decisions, and used as a base for evidence-based management and policy