Analyzing the Effects of Institutional- and Ecosystem-Level Variables on University Spin-Off Performance

F I Vega-Gómez,F J Miranda González,J Pérez-Mayo

doi:10.1177/2158244020931116

Abstract

Academic entrepreneurship has been one of the main research fields over the past 20 years, specifically due to the interest of policy makers in this topic. Initially, this interest focused on the creation of university spin-off (USO) firms; although given the new circumstances of the university and its context, there is a need to steer the research topic toward survival. This is because the simple creation of USOs, without their being able to survive or create value, is useless. This article focuses on one of the determining factors of the success of USOs, as measured by employment and sales growth: the influence of institutional- and ecosystem-level variables. Through a backward sequential process, our results show that the business size and the public support in the field of training and bureaucracy are the main elements that affect success.

Highlights

The past decades have been especially important for universities, producing changes in their aims
It is true that there is no consensus in the academic field about the definition of university spin-offs (USOs; Vesperi et al, 2018), they can be defined, generally speaking, as companies founded by individuals from the academic community, including people with research experience, and based on a technology that is transferred from the parent organization to society
With this model, based on the work of Mathisen and Rasmussen (2019), we aim to study the factors at the firm level and at the institutional and ecosystem levels that lead the USO to have a greater probability of success in the growth level of both sales and employment

Summary

Introduction

The past decades have been especially important for universities, producing changes in their aims. It is true that there is no consensus in the academic field about the definition of university spin-offs (USOs; Vesperi et al, 2018), they can be defined, generally speaking, as companies founded by individuals from the academic community, including people with research experience, and based on a technology that is transferred from the parent organization to society With this definition in mind, we can affirm that, in recent years, research on academic entrepreneurship has grown in parallel with the flourishing of entrepreneurship in the university context. The phenomenon of the USOs has received increased attention in recent years from governments, universities, and policy makers (Huynh et al, 2017) This increased attention is the result of trends in the current economy, emphasizing knowledge as a system of wealth creation (Brinkley & Lee, 2006), as well as the recent development of new technologies and the social, economic, and political changes of the past decades (Pérez & Carrasco, 2009). To achieve the desired transformation, universities and governments must focus on the transfer of the technology produced (Guerrero et al, 2016)

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