Evaluating Performance of University Spin-Off Companies: Lessons from Italy

Barbara Bigliardi,Chiara Verbano,Francesco Galati

doi:10.4067/s0718-27242013000200015

Abstract

Academic spin-offs are very special start-up companies that are founded by an academic inventor with the aim to exploit technological knowledge that originated within a University setting in order to develop products or services. During the last two decades, academic spin-offs have received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, mainly due to their ability to advance industrial application of scientific knowledge. Much of the studies available in literature on this matter, however, have focused on USA’s spin-offs, while still little attention has been paid to the European countries, and to Italy in particular. Thus, the aim of our research is twofold: first, to fill this gap in literature. Second, to propose, on the basis of the above mentioned literature review, a model of ex-ante evaluation of the spin-off companies’ performance. Specifically, the research methodology followed was a combination of literature analysis and Delphi technique: we first extensively reviewed the extant literature on spin-off companies, then we proposed to a panel of expert the indicators that emerged from the literature as affecting the performance of academic spin-offs.

Highlights

The generation and the application of new ideas, technologies and scientific knowledge are widely recognized as a fundamental prerequisite for the economic development, job creation and the formation of a competitive industrial structure (Gwyneth, 2006; Atasu et al, 2009)
In the last decade we assisted to a proliferation of such companies.The extant literature highlights a main reason for their growing economic importance: as the new “open innovation” model has been adopted by organizations, and especially from the bigger ones, it becomes of key importance collaboration with smaller companies with sophisticated scientific and knowledge basis, such as academic spin-offs that make available a multiple research environments and their multidisciplinarity.Academic spin-offs usually develop within high tech industries, such as biotechnology, medical technologies, information technologies, and their main activities are related to the transfer of technology and knowledge from University to industry
The extant literature proposes different studies identifying the factors that may impact a spin-off performance, even if separately each other, and not included into a general model of evaluation.All these studies move from the consideration that academic spin-offs involve unique challenges and success factors

Summary

Introduction

The generation and the application of new ideas, technologies and scientific knowledge are widely recognized as a fundamental prerequisite for the economic development, job creation and the formation of a competitive industrial structure (Gwyneth, 2006; Atasu et al, 2009). As recognized by numerous studies (e.g., Bellini et al, 2000; Pleschak, 2003), the creation of a company from a research organisation is an excellent way to commercialise the results of public research, as well as a way to contribute to the economic and social welfare and regional development.The companies that result from a budding process from universities are referred to with the term of academic spin-off Such companies contribute to technology transfer in two stages: first, they transfer technology from their parent organization to themselves, second, they transfer the technology to customers. Scholars often highlighted the importance of the creation and dissemination of knowledge at universities as an important driving force for technological innovation and economic growth (Muller et al, 2004)

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Conclusion