Economic Performance of Portuguese Academic Spin-Offs: Does the Human Capital of Founders Matter?

Abstract

Most existing literature on spin-offs deals with factors affecting the emergence of these firms and not so much with what influences their economic outcomes. Moreover, the role of human capital as a potential booster of economic performance in spin-offs has been neglected or analyzed rather superficially. This chapter aims at assessing the role that human capital plays on the performance of Portuguese spin-offs in its different forms, including the entrepreneurs’ level and type of education, skills, experience, and network capabilities. Using a sample of 90 founders of 61 Academic Spin-Offs (ASOs) located in Portugal, associated with the University Technology Enterprise Network (UTEN), it was found that among human capital dimensions, business expertise, most notably market knowledge, was the one that affected economic performance the most in ASOs. Both the level and type of formal education of the founders failed to significantly influence the economic performance of ASOs. The unemployment status of the founders (prior to creating the ASOs), formal contacts with university, as well as the undertaking of R&D activities and internationalization emerged as critical positive determinants of economic performance in ASOs. Although some evidence exists on the relevance of university research excellence for the performance of ASOs, a univocal result emerged regarding the university context: ASOs that exclusively resort to the services of Science Parks, Incubators, and TTOs outperformed the others.