Abstract
How entrepreneurs plan their business and build their companies plays a central role in how academia-industry-government relations are shaped in a particular region. But how do specific regional styles of building companies and understanding these relations develop? This paper conceptualises the entrepreneurs in a cluster as a community of practice and shows that narrative learning in this community of practice plays a crucial role in how they develop their strategies. Entrepreneurs consider and learn from stories about past successes and failures in the cluster. In particular, they engage with these stories to make sense of what they strive for in building a successful company. Dealing with the complex dynamics of financialisation plays a crucial role in this learning process. This paper is empirically based on biographical interviews with entrepreneurs and serial entrepreneurs in the Vienna biotechnology cluster.
Highlights
Regional innovation clusters are a crucial locus in the dynamic of academia, industry and government relations (Birch 2017a; Cooke 2001; Etzkowitz 2018)
This paper focuses on a third group of crucial actors and innovation organisers: entrepreneurs and serial entrepreneurs which found high-tech companies in a specific region and sector (Feldman et al 2005)
How do specific regional styles of building companies and industry/academia/government relations develop? This paper has focused on company founders and their staff as institutional entrepreneurs that play a crucial role in shaping these relations
Summary
Regional innovation clusters are a crucial locus in the dynamic of academia, industry and government relations (Birch 2017a; Cooke 2001; Etzkowitz 2018). Critical authors have shown that an overwhelming majority of biotech companies never bring any product to the market and that the overall profitability of the entire industry is very low (Lazonick and Tulum 2011; Mirowski 2011) Still both policy attention and venture capital investment have remained high over the last decades (Pisano 2006). Lazonick and Tulum (2011) argue that this is explained by the propensity of venture capital to rather treat a company, its brand and its intellectual property as assets to be sold on time than to see the company as an investment expected to generate revenue from any sales of an actual product (Lazonick and Tulum 2011) What consequences does this have for actors in a regional cluster? How to manage relations to venture capital without being forced to exit from the firm before it has concluded its actual project is a key concern of many life science entrepreneurs (Fochler 2016b)
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