University Spin-off Fundraising: The Impact of Entrepreneurial Capabilities and Social Networks Of Founding Teams during Start-ups

University spin-offs have increasingly received attention from academia, governments, and policymakers in studying the financing policies, venture capital investment decision making, the roles of venture capitalist in the development of new ventures, and the contributions of entrepreneur’s social capital to the fundraising activities. However, the limited number of studies in understanding of the contribution made by the entrepreneurial capabilities and social networks of a founding team to its fundraising ability still remains, especially within university spin-off context. Employing resource-based view theory and social networks approach, this paper enriches the knowledge by exploring university spin-offs in Spain. The results of this study empirically demonstrate that by exploiting social networks a founding team can improve its entrepreneurial capabilities, which in turn enhance its fundraising ability

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

A case study: Institutional Factors Affecting Lecturers’ Research Engagement in A University in Mekong Delta region, Vietnam

This case study investigated institutional factors affecting university lecturers’ research engagement in a multidisciplinary higher education institution in the Mekong Delta region, Vietnam. The study employed the interpretive qualitative case study approach with the use of three data collection tools (document analysis, surveys, and recorded semi-structured interviews). In this paper, the authors presented the findings of document analysis and the recorded semi-structured interviews. The findings indicated that institutional factors affecting lecturers’ research engagement in this studied university included governmental policies, funding and structure, resources, teaching loads, leadership and research environment. The paper suggested some recommendations to foster the lecturers’ research engagement in this university

University Spin-Off’s Seed Capital: An Empirical Study from Demand Perspectives

This study aims to enrich our knowledge of the influences of capabilities and social networks of entrepreneurial teams have on the engagement of external supporters in seed investments by exploring academic entrepreneurial teams. This paper explores capabilities and social networks of entrepreneurial teams in Spanish university spin-offs using quantitative data analysis. Basing upon resource-based view theory of Barney (1991) to study capabilities of the entrepreneurial teams, the research employ entrepreneurial technology, strategy, human capital, organizational viability, and commercial resources (Vohora et al., 2004). To study social networks of entrepreneurial teams, this study employs the conceptual model of Hoang and Antoncic (2003) to study the characteristics of social networks. The results from an examination of the sample of 181 Spanish university spin-offs demonstrate that by exploiting social networks an entrepreneurial team can shape its capabilities, which in turn improve its ability to access external seed investments. Thus, the paper has implications for universities in training and policy development to support spin-off’s activity, especially to build entrepreneurial teams with capabilities to pitch to the focused seed capital providers. This study addresses a fundamental question to contribute to the theory-based understanding of university spin-offs: What make financial supporters engage in seed investments

Entrepreneurship and Equity Crowdfunding: A Research Agenda

The potential of ‘the crowd’ to enhance investments, especially at levels previously that could reduce the financial constrain faced by new ventures, has led to the introductions of regulations to dominate crowdfunding activities. One of regulated areas is equity crowdfunding, which has the potential to disrupt the existing market provision for equity finance to early stage firms. This paper aims to provide a theoretical review of the extant literature. The results identify, from the perspective of entrepreneurs, equity investors and government, the key issues that potentially differentiate crowdfunding from other sources of equity finance and how these issues change the relationship between entrepreneurs and potential funders. Based upon the findings of the theoretical review, the paper suggests research directions in which future researchers can employ behaviour theory, agency theory and signalling theory to explore, investigate and further develop our understanding about equity crowdfunding within the entrepreneurial context

Education in Vietnam

Asia Education Symposium 2006, Inaugural Session: “Education in Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam” ( Day One; Sat., October 14

Structural parameter identification of a bolted connection embedded with a piezoelectric interface

As the impedance-based technique has been commonly accepted as an innovative structural health monitoring tool, structural identification of a piezoelectric-driven system is of significant interest for damage identification and quantification. This study presents a predictive modelling strategy, which combines the finite element (FE) method with a model-updating approach, for estimating the structural parameters of a piezoelectric interface-bolted connection system. Firstly, the basic operating principle of the piezoelectric-based smart interface is introduced. Secondly, a bolted connection is selected as a host structure to conduct real impedance measurement via the smart interface. Thirdly, a numerical FE model corresponding to the experimental model is established by using a FE program, COMSOL Multiphysics. A sensitivity-based model updating algorithm is adopted to fine-tune the FE model. Finally, structural parameters of the FE model are determined as the numerical impedance signatures match with the measured ones at the same high-frequency band with identical patterns. This study is expected to open an alternative approach for determining unknown structural parameters of the piezoelectric interface-bolted joint system in practice

Williston, VT: Increasing the Awareness of Hypertension Implications and Sequelae

Hypertension is the most common reason for health office visits in the US and for the use of prescription drugs. Many patients fail to truly understand the diagnosis of high blood pressure and the various health consequences that comes with poor regulation such as cardiovascular disease, stroke and renal disease. This project was aimed to increase patient education on the implications of hypertension and its complications.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1200/thumbnail.jp