The role of university incubators in stimulating academic entrepreneurship

Eva Stal,Tales Andreassi,Asa Fujino

doi:10.1016/j.rai.2016.01.004

Abstract

Many Brazilian universities have technology-based incubators, but there is a small presence of firms created by students, alumni or teachers (spin-offs). Thus, such incubators do not encourage the transfer of technologies developed in universities to society, through the creation of new businesses, one of the main ways of university–industry interaction. To test this assumption, we studied eight university incubators. As a theoretical basis, we used the concepts of open innovation and entrepreneurial university; as a methodology, we adopted a qualitative approach through the use of bibliographical, documental and field research, with in-depth interviews. Results show that there is no priority for companies created from academic research results, despite the incubators’ preference for projects that have a high potential for interaction with the university. Also, there are few efforts to attract the academic audience, which leads to underutilization of this important channel for the transfer of research results.

Highlights

Closed innovation was the pattern adopted by companies until the early 2000s, in which research and development (R&D) were conducted solely in their own laboratories, using qualified professionals and significant resources
We have updated the research done by Freitas et al (2011) until December 2014, using the SPELL (Scientific Periodicals Electronic Library) database, a collection of articles published in Brazilian journals of Business Administration, Accounting and Tourism, where we have identified 11 other items under the keywords spin-off, academic spin-offs, academic entrepreneurship and scientific entrepreneurship, which will be described in the following item
This article aimed to analyze the performance of technology-based university incubators on the attraction of spin-off companies created by university members

Summary

Introduction

Closed innovation was the pattern adopted by companies until the early 2000s, in which research and development (R&D) were conducted solely in their own laboratories, using qualified professionals and significant resources. In the last decade, open innovation emerged as a new model, in which companies take advantage of the creativity of customers, suppliers, universities, research institutes or independent inventors, through partnerships, thereby obtaining more innovation, faster and with less spending. In the open innovation model, universities are more demanded, and closer ties with the productive sector are considered as their third mission, besides teaching (the first and traditional) and researching (the second mission), as mentioned by Etzkowitz (2008) and Laredo (2007). The vision of an "entrepreneurial university" is discussed by several authors (Etzkowitz, 2008; Mowery, Nelson, Sampat, & Ziedonis, 2001), in which technology licensing or business creation by researchers are the main forms of transferring the results of academic research

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