University Spin-offs in the Business Transformation of the University of the Century

Research SummaryThere is limited evidence on how university spin‐offs (USOs) respond to external crises. We fill this gap by assessing how UK digital USOs responded to the recent COVID‐19 pandemic. Specifically, we examine how USOs' capabilities (scaling‐up, fundraising, and intellectual property) and access to their parent university's financial resources/infrastructures interact intertemporally to address demand and supply challenges associated with the pandemic. Our analysis revealed that the interplay of (a) USOs' scaling‐up and fundraising capabilities and (b) USOs' fundraising capabilities and university parent's support infrastructure constituted the best strategy for developing intertemporal resilience during the crisis.Managerial SummaryWe investigate the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on digital USOs. Assuming support from parent universities, we explored how their scaling‐up efforts, fundraising efforts, and intellectual property addressed demand and supply challenges during these unprecedented times. First, USOs that could scale up while fundraising were more likely to sustain operations and satisfy demand through various stages of the pandemic. Second, USOs with fundraising capabilities and parent university support demonstrated greater resilience. These findings suggest valuable insights for CEOs of USOs and their parent universities in handling external crises.

Crowdsourcing is an emerging technique adopted by companies in the process of innovation. It can be also adopted by university spin-offs that play the significant role in the process of knowledge and technology transfer. In recent years, they have been researched from diverse perspectives. However, there are hardly any studies based on university spin-offs that have implemented crowdsourcing. This chapter presents how crowdsourcing business model might be applied to develop a university spin-off. The paper explains the rationale behind the adaptation of crowdsourcing by innovation-driven spin-offs. One overarching question of the chapter is “Can crowdsourcing be well adopted by university spin-offs?” Our study will open new paths for research and discussion, and its results will be supportive for decision making in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship. The logic of this paper is to speculate how university spin-offs can create value with the groups of online users through adopting crowdsourcing in its operation.

Nowadays, universities in many countries are encouraged to take their research products to the next level by translating them into commercialized products to benefit society at large. In doing so, they establish a firm, a so-called University Spin-Off (USO), which specializes in carrying out the mission. A USO is a firm which is established to optimize or commercialize the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) of the university. Previous studies into USOs, documented in the extant literature, have mainly focused on investigating the initial process of the USOs’ establishment, such as the drivers to initiate the USOs. Only a little attention has been paid to investigate the various drivers affecting the development of the USOs. Studies into the survivability of USOs are relatively limited. The current study is intended to fill this gap. Additionally, the findings are expected to add to the existing literature on USOs, particularly in the context of developing countries. This study aims at identifying the factors affecting the USOs’ survival. We used the resource-based view and contingency theory to identify and understand the various factors (internal and external) that might affect a USO’s survivability. Data for this study were collected through a survey. From the literature, we identified ten relevant factors for a USO’s survivability and 41 items to operationalize them, which we then used to develop a questionnaire. The factors are the USO’s business orientation, human resources’ reputation, product innovation, business plan, business models’ innovation, social networks, export activities, capital access, government support, and the business’s incubator. The data were collected from 111 USOs established by 14 universities located in five big cities in Indonesia. The survey was conducted from February until May 2017. Before performing the regression analysis, we deployed a factor analysis to validate the instruments and found that all the 41 items were valid and fell into ten component factors. The analysis found that there were only two factors which significantly affected the USO’s survivability: Its human resources’ reputation and social networks. These findings lead us to a conclusion that building a good reputation and maintaining its social networks are very important to ensure the survivability of a USO.

Exploring University-Industry Technology Transfer in India: Two Models

Closing the global vaccine equity gap: equitably distributed manufacturing

University spin-offs (USOs) are considered as a means of value creation derived from academic research. However, due to financial and managerial constraints, many USOs find it difficult to maintain their business and achieve stabilization. In this study, we investigate the factors affecting the time taken by USOs to reach their break-even point or to secure initial investment from venture capitals, whichever comes earlier. We specifically examine the effect of knowledge diversity, experiential knowledge, intellectual property, and the communication capacity of the USO founders on the time taken to reach stabilization. A competing risk model is applied to the survey data of USO founders in Korea. According to our findings, knowledge diversity, experiential knowledge, and communication capacity are significantly related to the time taken to reach the break-even point. Knowledge diversity, intellectual property, and communication capacity, on the other hand, are associated with the time taken to receive initial investment from venture capitals. Our study can contribute toward deriving strategies for USOs to increase their stabilization speed.

Crowdsourcing is an emerging technique adopted by companies in the process of innovation. It can be also adopted by university spin-offs that play the significant role in the process of knowledge and technology transfer. In recent years, they have been researched from diverse perspectives. However, there are hardly any studies based on university spin-offs that have implemented crowdsourcing. This chapter presents how crowdsourcing business model might be applied to develop a university spin-off. The paper explains the rationale behind the adaptation of crowdsourcing by innovation-driven spin-offs. One overarching question of the chapter is “Can crowdsourcing be well adopted by university spin-offs?” Our study will open new paths for research and discussion, and its results will be supportive for decision making in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship. The logic of this paper is to speculate how university spin-offs can create value with the groups of online users through adopting crowdsourcing in its operation.

Crowdsourcing is an emerging technique adopted by companies in the process of innovation. It can be also adopted by university spin-offs that play the significant role in the process of knowledge and technology transfer. In recent years, they have been researched from diverse perspectives. However, there are hardly any studies based on university spin-offs that have implemented crowdsourcing. This chapter presents how crowdsourcing business model might be applied to develop a university spin-off. The paper explains the rationale behind the adaptation of crowdsourcing by innovation-driven spin-offs. One overarching question of the chapter is “Can crowdsourcing be well adopted by university spin-offs?” Our study will open new paths for research and discussion, and its results will be supportive for decision making in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship. The logic of this paper is to speculate how university spin-offs can create value with the groups of online users through adopting crowdsourcing in its operation.

The development of university spin-offs: early dynamics of technology transfer and networking

The third mission of universities, the one that allows the commercialization of research results, has assumed a strategic role and primary importance in government policies, in Europe as well as in the rest of the world. Although this attention has raised interest around topics such as technology transfers and university spin-offs, the scarcity of available resources and the conventional university culture still did not allow us an optimal use of the opportunities related to this type of activity. It is necessary to develop a network among university, public sector, business and finance to create value and transform into business projects the result of years of academic research. The aim of this work is to investigate the phenomenon of USOs and the possible link with the private equity and public funding emphasizing that this network creates value for universities, investors and the community itself.KeywordsUSOsInnovation transferPrivate equityPublic fundingNetworkCase study

Technology Transfer Models Between Industrial Biotechnology Companies and Academic Spin-Offs

Além de garantir o direito de propriedade e exclusividade ao titular da criação intelectual, a proteção da propriedade intelectual permite o avanço da inovação e a divulgação dos conhecimentos, equilibrando os interesses do titular e acarretando benefícios para a sociedade. Neste sentido, a Propriedade Intelectual é estratégica no cenário globalizado e competitivo, no qual o conhecimento e a capacidade de inovar têm papel importante para o desenvolvimento de um país. Assim, visando à gestão da propriedade intelectual, com foco na inovação, faz-se necessário incentivar a cooperação entre a ICT e a empresa, para a realização de pesquisas e desenvolvimento tecnológico conjuntos, bem como dinamizar os processos de licenciamento e transferência de tecnologia. Nesse sentido, as ICTs com o auxílio dos NITs devem adotar políticas de gestão da Propriedade Intelectual, elaborando instrumentos jurídicos adequando o ambiente acadêmico ao contexto regulatório. Cabe às ICTs, por meio do NITs, estimularem a cultura da proteção da propriedade intelectual gerada na Instituição, podendo as mesmas atuarem em rede, aprimorando e avançando na gestão da propriedade intelectual. A Propriedade Intelectual é um fator estratégico para a inovação científica e tecnológica e, no Brasil, tem-se buscado a convergência dos setores público e empresarial, com o propósito de contribuir para o desenvolvimento científico, tecnológico e social do país, por meio de um processo contínuo com ações conjuntas e coordenadas.

Public research plays an extremely important role in social and economic development, and has implications for industry, services, education, training, the creation and diffusion of knowledge, management etc. In turn, R&D and innovation activities in the business sector are becoming increasingly open. Being influenced by increasingly tightened global competition, companies are entering into partnerships with other companies, universities or public research institutions (PRIs) to leverage competences from different places and organizations to foster innovation. The search for partners and the management of many co-operations itself are new challenges especially in terms of administering intellectual property rights. Universities and PRIs must respond to the changing requirements imposed by companies while maintaining their unique positions as research and science related institutions. The overall framework conditions for these actors are changing, which in turn requires new government policies especially given the slowdown in key performance indicators of the commercialization activities of PRIs.The paper highlights recent trends and approaches related to knowledge and technology transfer from public research and education to industry. It considers legislative initiatives to target industry engagement and research personnel, new technology transfer office models, collaborative intellectual property (IP) tools, and initiatives to facilitate access to public research results. The authors stress that the quality of research has a strong influence on knowledge and technology transfer. In turn, contrary to the widespread belief that knowledge and technology transfer activities might negatively impact scientists’ academic work several studies found evidence that the engagement of scientists in technology transfer and commercialization activities does not have negative impacts on the quality and quantity of academic research. In fact, scientists who are actively engaged in technology and knowledge transfer, i.e. through patenting, also enjoy a high scientific reputation and in most cases do excellent scientific work.

The new technologies born from academic research can be very promising, yet they are often very early stage. University spin-off companies are uniquely positioned to tackle the risks associated with new technologies emerging from academia by developing proofs of concept, functioning prototypes, and new products. While these enterprises start from a solid research and development foundation, they face their own unique set of challenges—they are strongly anchored in the scientific and technological expertise that is typically backed by intellectual property but often lack the business experience needed to develop and market products demanded by customers. University spin-offs have access to substantial non-dilutive funding that can be utilized for advancing product development. While the relentless pursuit of these funds builds a company's credibility and improves its position for negotiating future private investment, university spin-offs would greatly benefit from an early focus on complementing their technology teams with their business teams. These new enterprises should consider pursuing private investment in parallel to utilizing sources of non-dilutive funding. Timing of private investment is extremely important to maximize the value of the opportunity, and, therefore, building relationships with investors early on and getting ready for executing an investment round can greatly increase odds for success. While there is no single path to formulate, pursue, and adapt successful financing strategies, lessons can be learned from real-life cases of university spin-offs that continue their journeys towards ultimate success.

The transfer of technology from the organizational viewpoint