Influence of the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem and its knowledge spillovers in developing successful university spin-offs

Abstract

University Spin-Offs (USOs) are dynamically involved in the knowledge spillover process and incorporated in the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem. Drawing on the knowledge spillovers related concepts and entrepreneurial ecosystem approach, the paper aims to explore the hypothesis that the regional context may partially determine the USOs' growth via a cross-national analysis and using an ‘interactionist’ approach. Two samples of Spanish and Italian USOs (516 and 904 firms, respectively) over the period 2005–2013 were used and it was applied the multilevel modelling to empirically test the hypotheses. The findings show that regional context affects firm's growth only for Spanish USOs, while for the Italian USOs the evidences seem to suggest a not significant determining influence. The paper provides evidence that the region is a critical contextual dimension and an influential factor in building a more explicative research agenda on entrepreneurial universities.