How to Develop Collaboration in Drug Development Process: The Role of Professional Service Firms

The innovation chain of the pharmaceutical industry is more and more complex. In particular, a new type of players, the start-ups founded by researchers (Academic Start-ups) have proven to be particularly effective in the first steps of exploring new, radically innovative technologies. These small start-ups miss the financial resources and the industrial experience necessary to embark in the later stage of technologies‘ development. To overcome these limits, what academic start-ups require the most is a collaborative linkage with large biotech and pharma companies. To such end, Business Development Professionals are offering their services to academic start-ups, to set up a collaborative linkage with potential partners. Our article investigates the process of engagement between Academic Start-ups and Business Development Professionals and in particular, we focus on the factors that influence collaboration between the two actors. In order to investigate the development process of collaboration we conducted an exploratory study trough the submission of a semi-structured questionnaire covering different aspects of the engagement process to a sample of business professionals. The study provide first evidences about the main factors that prevent the development of collaborations and provides some suggestions to overcome the challenges that both parts found in the collaboration process

The Entrepreneurial University: How to Develop the Entrepreneurial Orientation of Academia

In the last years, universities have assumed a prominent role in the science and technology-based economic development. The concept of entrepreneurial university, a key concept in the triple helix model developed by Etzkowitz, identifies the evolution of the university role with the addition to the traditional missions of university (education and research) of a third mission that is to contribute to the economic development through the transfer of research results from the laboratory to the economic system. The objective of the research is to analyze how universities are implementing this new mission and investigate factors affecting their entrepreneurial orientation. More specifically, our paper aims to investigate the existence of a relationship among the entrepreneurial orientation of university and some factors representing the internal and external context in which the university is involved

Circular business models in biological cycles: the case of an Italian spin-off

As a new economic model fostering increased resource efficiency, the circular economy has become the subject of academic research, national and supranational policies and attracted the interest of business leaders recently. The primary role of corporations and business model innovation to make significant progress towards a circular economy has been emphasised in scholarly literature. However, there is a dearth of academic studies investigating examples of circular economy implementation at the company level and, particularly, in the bio-based industry. Hence, this article contributes to the academic literature by casting some light on the characteristics of circular business models in a practical, bio-based context, using a theoretical framework that bridges academic and practitioners’ literature on the circular economy and business models. To illustrate our points we draw on an in-depth, qualitative case of a circular start-up from the Italian ecological paint market. Albeit constrained in its generalisability, this research does provide some useful insights concerning how companies design and implement circular activities and business models

The dynamic of formation of entrepreneurial commitment in academic spin-off

In an era of knowledge-based competition, technology transfer from university to firms is a key issue for the wealth of Nations and Regions. The creation of academic spin-off companies is one of the ways through which pursue such technology transfer process (TTP). Even if in Italy this form of TTP has become more and more popular in the last years (Netval, 2008), the gap with other EU countries remains large. In our opinion, the main problem lies in the lack of young researchers’ entrepreneurial commitment (Mises, 1949; Baumol, 1990) here understood as a complex of decisions and actions which bind the would be entrepreneur to the fate of his venture. In the first step of new venture creation, entrepreneurial commitment is a necessary ingredient to overcome the phase of assessment of the economic feasibility of a project and to be engaged actively, investing time and resources to create a spin-off company. According to Vohora et al.(2004) entrepreneurial commitment should be seen as a different concept from entrepreneurial intention which could be considered as the will of a person to start a new business. In the specific domain of academic spin-off, entrepreneurial intention therefore could be intended as the will of a person so far devoted to scientific research, to create a new venture based on the results of his research. In our opinion, entrepreneurial intention has a role in the make-up of entrepreneurial commitment but other ingredients have to be considered. Eventually, such ingredients may impede the formation of the entrepreneurial commitment or at least lead to a weak entrepreneurial commitment of the would be entrepreneur. The effects of a weak commitment have already been assessed by Sorrentino (2008) and Sanchez (2008) who recognize that a weak entrepreneurial commitment may delineate the boundary between the spin-off that die prematurely and those who continue on their development path. In this perspective, starting from the literature that conceptualizes the entrepreneurial commitment as the result of subjective factors (motivational drives, psychological factors, past experience) and factors characterizing the context in which the entrepreneur operates, the objective of the paper is to investigate elements that qualify Entrepreneurial intention (Bird, 1988) and those which play a predominant role in developing it in Entrepreneurial Commitment (Fini et al., 2008). From the point of view of the structure, the paper is divided into four sections over the introduction. The first section highlights, from various perspectives, the pros of spin-off initiatives. The second section analyze the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities that arise on the frontiers of scientific research and inherent characteristics of spin-offs. The third section is devoted instead to the analysis of main literature on the concepts of Entrepreneurial intent and commitment. The fourth section is then devoted to set up a research model and to show some preliminary results that come up from an empirical research that was conducted by the submission of a questionnaire to a group of PhD students. The aim of this preliminary research was that to assess the presence of an entrepreneurial intention in young researchers and factors that seems responsible of its transformation into a real entrepreneurial commitment

Co-evolution strategy in the high technology start-up: leveraging on sidecar investments and escalating commitment

Obiettivi. L’obiettivo del paper è l’identificazione dei diversi modelli attraverso i quali le nuove imprese ad alta tecnologia possono attuare una strategia di co-evoluzione. Metodologia. Il paper si basa sull’analisi di un gruppo di 3 start-up tecnologiche operanti nel settore del packaging alimentare, settore ormai maturo nel quale tuttavia recenti sviluppi nel campo dei nuovi materiali stanno introducendo importanti innovazioni tecnologiche radicali. Risultati. I risultati ottenuti evidenziano che pur nelle diverse modalità di attuazione, l’adozione di una logica di sidecar investments e di commitment progressivo può essere un valido strumento nel coinvolgimento di partner esterni. Il coinvolgimento di un primo gruppo di soggetti infatti opera come effetto segnaletico nei confronti di altri potenziali interlocutori, attivando un effetto di comunicazione amplificato ed attirando nuovi partners. Limiti della ricerca. Il paper rappresenta una prima indagine esplorativa che richiede ulteriori applicazioni in settori diversi e in imprese in più avanzate fasi di sviluppo al fine di poter valutare l’effetto di lungo termine di una strategia di co-evoluzione basata su una logica di sidecar investments e di escalating commitment. Implicazioni pratiche. Dal punto di vista pratico la ricerca ha importanti implicazioni in quanto potrebbe fornire utili indicazioni sulla strategia da mettere in campo per favorire l’avvio e lo sviluppo di imprese technology based. Originalità del lavoro. Il lavoro sviluppa un modello teorico utile alla comprensione delle modalità attraverso le quali una start-up tecnologica può attuare una strategia di co-evoluzione

Entrepreneurial process in the high technology start up: signaling effects and co-evolution strategy

According to Acs and Audretsch (2005), connect existing stock of knowledge (the past) to new applications (the future) is the essence of innovative entrepreneurship. But what if future applications don’t look like a linear factor growth that can be easily detected, but instead as a chaotic sum of choices of many actors that are more or less in the same situation of uncertainty about the future? Could the entrepreneurial process be considered just like a gambling type of game (Barney, 1986)? No doubt, luck and serendipity (Denrell et al., 2003), play an important role as in all human activity, but very few would consider people like Steve Jobs just a lucky man. Entrepreneurial process in high tech is not merely a process of discovery, eventually by chance, of an entrepreneurial opportunity, but is about creation of an entrepreneurial opportunity (Sarasvathy et al. 2005). To create an entrepreneurial opportunity require a peculiar set of entrepreneurial capabilities and strategies (Alvarez, Barney, 2007). Especially in the exploration phase of a technology's life ,(March, 1991; Noteboom, 2000), where you have to challenge the "status quo", you need cooperation and you have to leverage on networks (Baum et al., 2000). If we consider that technologies are built on technologies (Arthur, 2009), we can understand that high tech companies are permanently suspended in a state of vicious circle (upstream there aren't players available to improve the enabling technologies you need, and downstream there aren't players that are willing to consider your as an enabling technology for them), and a virtuous circle in which instead, all are aligned. What might make a difference between a vicious circle and a virtuous one is then the capability to activate a co-­creation process of building an entrepreneurial opportunity. Co‐creation is a form of entrepreneurial process typical of high tech start up, where the key issue is about coordinating (no matter through which kind of network, loosely coupled or strong tied...) time, direction and level of efforts to develop an existing technology to be part of a virtuous circle. Investing in what has been defined an UU world (Zeckhauser, 2006) is very risky (Knight, 1921) and a sidecar kind of investment strategy is a golden rule. The objective of this paper will be that of identifying, through a small panel of cases of italian high tech start up, different models of setting out a sidecar investment strategy to co-­create a new technology-­based opportunity

University support initiatives and development of academic entrepreneurial intent: The role of Start-up competitions

Academic spin-offs are attracting increasing attention by researchers and policy makers. As a consequence of the non commercial environment of the universities (Siegel et al., 2003), researchers face a number of significant barriers in creating new ventures (Vohora et al., 2004). The main obstacle concerns the change of mentality and role that is required to a researcher and then the development of an entrepreneurial intention and a real entrepreneurial commitment (Vohora et al., 2004). In this context, previous positive experience and success stories of colleagues in the creation of spin-off, as a result of geographical and cognitive proximity, could create the motivation and promote, among academic community, a positive humus about entrepreneurship. In the last years, many universities have promoted initiatives and policies aiming to stimulate the creation of academic spin-offs, such as start-up competitions. In our opinion, in addition to the direct effect on the winners, the result of start-up competition could have an indirect positive impact on university and academic community as a whole: the winning of a start-up competition could make other researchers more comfortable with the idea to start an academic spin-off. The objective of the paper is to analyze how the results obtained by researchers in start-up competition influence the entrepreneurial intentions and commitment among university community. The research shows that start-up competition could have a positive impact on entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial commitment among researchers becoming to the same university of the winner. The winning of a “colleague” in a competition and the storytelling of success stories, stimulate other researchers to try the entrepreneurial experience, through the participation into a start-up competition and, sometimes, through the creation of a new firm. Implications of the study might be that investing in start-up competition is a useful mechanism to lower the level of uncertainty about more appropriate organizational structure of new high tech ventures (Langlois, 2007), and facilitate the flow of a positive discourse about entrepreneurship at a local level (Hjort, 2003)