Academic Start-up Research Articles

Startup grants and the development of academic startup projects during funding: Quasi-experimental evidence from the German ‘EXIST – Business startup grant’

Public support programs for (academic) startups are an important component of innovation and technology policy. There are many types of startup policy instrument, one of which is supporting prospective founders with startup grants. The present study contributes to the literature by examining the effectiveness of a specific startup grant entitled ‘EXIST – Business Startup Grant’. This measure is Germany’s largest public startup support program and aims to increase the number of technology-oriented and knowledge-based academic startups. The present research investigates the extent to which products of funded startups, the projects’ business planning, the founders’ skills, the degree of networking, and the uptake of external funding evolve over the duration of the grant. Evidence of the effects on these variables is generated by means of a pipeline-based comparison group design. Findings indicate that the startup grant contributes substantially to the development of the products and the business planning of the funded startups, moderately increases their degree of networking and their uptake of external funding, and slightly improves the skills of the founding team during the funding period. Several robustness checks – including a replication by another type of research design, namely a pre-post comparison – strongly support the findings. Hence it is very likely that the program advances startups in their development and thus contributes to later economic success.

Explaining the stage of product in pre-seed academic startup ventures: An empirical analysis using monitoring data from a German startup support program

A central prerequisite for market entry and the subsequent economic performance of academic startup ventures is that the product on which the business model is based must be sufficiently well developed. The present research aims to provide answers in the quest to identify the explanatory factors in the development stage of the product of academic spin-offs in the pre-seed phase of their ventures. This is based on various factors that play a role in the innovation process and the development of new products – including characteristics of the project, characteristics of the R&D work and business model development, previous freelance experience, networking, financing, and technology field. The empirical analysis of data from academic startup ventures enrolled in a large German startup support program – using structural equation modeling – revealed both direct and indirect statistically significant effects, showing that a large proportion of the selected variables can be employed to explain the development stage of the product. The findings indicate that the R&D work stage has a medium-sized effect, while business model development stage, the degree of networking, project feasibility, and previous freelance experience connected with the product all have small effects.

Improving universities’ activities in academic startup support through public interventions: The effectiveness of the German programme ‘EXIST—leverage of potentials’

Abstract Academic startups have a considerable economic impact, which is why public support programmes for them are considered an important component of innovation and technology policy. In this context, university support programmes can be an important part of the policy toolkit by aiming to improve universities’ startup environment and thus promote startup activity at those institutions. Assessing the effectiveness of these programmes is a key evaluation task inasmuch as it provides an evidence base for decision-makers and broadens the discourse on promoting startup culture at universities. This study reports on the background, methodology, and results of the evaluation of the effectiveness of a large university support programme in the academic startup sector in Germany, ‘EXIST—Leverage of potentials’. This programme supports universities which have little experience in building a startup culture and startup-supportive structures. Reliable data are available for two indicators that can be employed to assess intervention effects by means of a difference-in-differences design, namely for the number of applications universities submitted and the number of grants they received in what is Germany’s largest funding programme for prospective startups. The findings indicate that funding by ‘EXIST—Leverage of potentials’ positively affects universities’ activities in the area of startup support.

The Scholar‐Entrepreneurial Organization: Lessons in Building an Academic Startup

This article introduces the concept of a scholar‐entrepreneurial organization (SEO), defined as an entrepreneurial venture within an academic institution. We explore the case of the Negotiation Task Force (NTF), an SEO hosted at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Equipped with university seed funding, the NTF is intended to be self‐funded at the end of its 36‐month incubation period. We explain the NTF’s mission, minimum viable products, history, and now established flagship programs; explore the challenges and opportunities that a scholarly startup confronts; and conclude with recommendations for others seeking to launch an SEO.

Lab, Gig or Enterprise? How scientist-inventors form nascent startup teams

The entrepreneurial teams that form around university-based technologies influence whether and how those technologies are commercialized. Past research has emphasized the roles of external actors, such as technology transfer officers or investors, in managing the evolution of academic startup teams. But less is known about how individual scientist-inventors form their initial teams. To explore that process, we conducted longitudinal interviews with nine scientist-inventors leading nascent startups at major U.S. universities. Our analyses revealed that these scientists were working with a more extensive set of commercially-relevant knowledge and network connections than past research has accounted for. In fact, the scientists had their own “lay theories” of academic entrepreneurship that encompassed team-specific ideas as well as broader ideas about how their technologies ought to be commercialized. We identified four “design principles” capturing key variations in what the scientists hoped to achieve through their teams: control, scope, entitativity, and dynamism. We further found these principles clustered into three distinct commercialization models, which we called Lab, Gig, and Enterprise. Finally, we elaborated the models' implications for the scientists' team formation strategies, the sources through which they identified new members, and their approaches to dealing with administrators and investors. Our findings change what we know about nascent academic startups by showing how scientists play a critical internal role alongside, prior to, and sometimes instead of the external drivers of team formation whose roles have been more extensively documented.

The Importance of Academic New Ventures for Sustainable Regional Development

Establishment of new entrepreneurial ventures have a direct influence on economic growth of the economy and society of every country. It relates especially to unemployment level and net income of the employees. Given these facts, the two aims of the paper are: 1) presentation of the Innovativeness of 14 countries of South – East Europe region and two additional countries: Poland and Hungary based on their overall ranking(s) as well as Information and Communication Technologies, ICT access and ICT use; and 2) to present development and business performance of academic start-up and spin-off companies in ICT sector which were created by the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) and which allowed it to become a sustainable University. The indicators such as total number of new ventures, number of employees, total revenue and average gross profit margin were used in order to analyse establishment, development and sustainability of academic ICT start-up and spin-off companies. The study shows that sustainable measures, particularly academic start-up and spin-off companies, have a very important role in sustainable economic growth (local, national and regional) and are a significant driver of innovation. They are of key importance for the sustainable development of the University.

Towards Digitalization in Academic Start-ups - An Attempt to Classify Start-up Projects of the Gruendungsgarage

Founded in 2013 as a playground for implementation-oriented start-up ideas, the Gruendungsgarage is now an established academic start-up accelerator and an integral part of the regional start-up scene. Starting with a brief in-troduction to the program of the Gruendungsgarage as a best practice example with five years of experience in academic entrepreneurial education, a model with a practical-oriented focus for classifying the degree of digitalization in start-up projects is presented. Successful start-ups and promising start-up projects from the Gruendungsgarage are classified according to their degree of digitalization and illustrated by examples. Finally, implications for the practice in engineering education on entrepreneurship are derived and suggestions for future research are identified.

Gruendungsgarage – A Best-Practice Example of an Academic Start-up Accelerator

Over the past four decades, entrepreneurship has grown within universities faster than virtually any other area of intellectual pursuit. And it appears that the pace is accelerating with more universities seeking to develop programs and centers fo-cused on entrepreneurship. Yet, understanding how to build entrepreneurship programs that empower and transform has remained challenging for some institu-tions. This paper investigated the development of an entrepreneurship program called Gruendungsgarage [1]. The Gruendungsgarage is a cooperation between the University of Graz (KFU) and the Graz University of Technology (TUG). Originally it was designed as an interdisciplinary and interuniversity teaching format offered as an elective course where students were able to work on their own real business ideas while getting assistance from university experts as well as from successful practitioners with a wide range of experience. Because of its popularity and constant improvement, Gruendungsgarage became more and more professional and over time changed its format into an academic start-up accelera-tor. Setting up university start-up accelerator programs has been a worldwide proven model that enables students to intensively develop their business idea into a marketable product or service in just a few months. Since the winter semester 2017/18 Gruendungsgarage has admitted not only students but also scientific staff. University and postdoctoral researchers benefit from a wide range of Gruendungsgarage services, as technical scientists with high-tech innovation get supported by experts and entrepreneurs, creating a business model suitable to their scientific discoveries

University as New Entrepreneurial Finance Player. What Role?

The European strategy is to promote new businesses as a real driver of economic growth, but also to support their growth and resilience. A typical kind of new business is the academic start-up they can play a strategical role on the local economy. Our paper investigates the academic start-ups strengths and weaknesses and the role that university can promote to support them in value creation. The authors tested the research question on a sample of start-ups of university of Pisa. Findings highlight important academic start-ups financial and not-financial goals useful to dialogue with entrepreneurial finance players. The research show also some vulnerabilities. In the conclusion, the role of university as new entrepreneurial player is discussed.

University as new entrepreneurial finance player: A search for the new role

The European strategy is to promote new businesses as a real driver of economic growth, but also to support their growth and resilience. A typical kind of new business is the academic start-up (ASU) that can play a strategic role in their local economy. This paper aims to contribute to the lively debate about the universities policies in entrepreneurial finance. In the first part, it investigates the strengths and weaknesses of academic start-ups and the role that universities have to support them in value creation. The authors tested the research questions on a sample of start-ups of the University of Pisa. The findings show important financial and not-financial goals of academic start-ups. These goals can fuel the dialogue with entrepreneurial finance players. Furthermore, the research shows some ASUs’ vulnerabilities. In conclusion, the role of universities as new entrepreneurial players is discussed.

Academic centers and/as industrial consortia in American microelectronics research

In the U.S., in the late 1970s and early 1980s, academic research centers that were tightly linked to the semiconductor industry began to proliferate – at exactly the same time as the first academic start-up companies in biotech, and slightly before the first U.S. industrial semiconductor research consortia. I show that some of the same factors stimulated institutional entrepreneurs to found both industrial consortia and academic centers. But industrial consortia and academic centers were not just co-emergent. They were also commingled organizational forms – consortia took advantage of ties to academic centers and vice versa. Thus, any understanding of the one must account for the other as well. However, academic microelectronics research centers possessed greater flexibility to forge alliances with other industries than did industrial consortia – a flexibility they increasingly took advantage of in the 1990s, as their importance to their original patrons in the semiconductor industry receded.

Visibility and Reputation of New Entrepreneurial Projects from Academia: the Role of Start-Up Competitions

Academic spin-offs, i.e., new venture projects backed by one or more researchers, are attracting increasing attention by researchers and policy makers as an effective way to increase the rate of technology transfer from Public Research Organizations (PROs) to the business environment. With the aim of supporting technology transfer processes, in the last years, many universities have carry out specific policies and a wide range of programs addressed to the development of academic entrepreneurship. Among these, the organization of a start-up competition is rather popular. But, how effective do such activities result, in particular the start-up competitions, in supporting academic researchers toward entrepreneurship? Are these kinds of initiatives able to raise the level of the reputation of academic entrepreneurial projects? If so, would such social capital have any real impact on the entrepreneurial development of academic spin-off? Is this social capital able to improve the spin-off’s ability to gain access to and acquire an initial stock of resources? Our exploratory research, following the emerging paradigm of the Quadruple-Helix Model, takes into consideration the mediating role of Media players in building visibility and reputation of nascent entrepreneurial projects from academia. The study that we performed is based on the results of web citations of business projects that won at least one prize awarded by an academic start-up competition. We consider the 2013 edition of the Italian universities business plan competitions (PNI), and we tried to measure the visibility and the reputation effect experienced by winners of local and national steps of the business plan competition. Implications of the study might be that investing in start-up competition is a useful mechanism to gain in visibility and might be useful as an ignition mechanism to start a positive entrepreneurship discourse about academic spin-offs among stakeholders that control access to valuable resources for them.

Overcoming the Valley of Death in the Academic Startup

Overcoming the Valley of Death in the Academic Startup

Estado actual del branding en las compañías spin-off y start-up académicas: caso universidades públicas en Colombia

Esta investigación tiene como fin describir el estado actual de los procesos de branding que efectúan las empresas tipo spin-off y start-upacadémicas en Colombia. Los hallazgos están basados en el estudio de caso de tres empresas tipo spin-off académico y tres start-upacadémico, provenientes de tres universidades públicas colombianas. Los datos son recopilados a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas aplicadas a los fundadores de las compañías, y a su vez analizados mediante la metodología de análisis de contenido cualitativo. Se empleó el modelo de análisis de branding para PYME descrito por Bresciani y Eppler (2010). Los resultados muestran la importancia de las actividades de branding para las empresas estudiadas. Nuevos factores fueron detectados como relevantes y particulares para los procesos de brandingen las spin-off y start-up académicas: la ausencia de departamentos de mercadeo, las actividades publicitarias como medio principal para efectuar presencia de marca, la figura del emprendedor como “representación viva” de la marca, los procesos de selección de personal y la importancia del respaldo de marca de la universidad. Se encontró que los factores que no han impulsado o permitido actividades de brandingen las empresas son la falta de recursos financieros, el desconocimiento del tema y la subvaloración de este. Finalmente se describió el proceso cíclico para el branding de la categoría de empresas analizadas.

Academic entrepreneurship in knowledge and technology-based industries: the fundamental determinants at German research universities and universities of applied sciences

Research on the institutional-level determinants of academic start-up activity is mostly focused on research universities. Examining German Universities of Applied Sciences (UASs), this article illustrates that there are also other types of institutions of higher education that not only comprise a valuable potential for academic entrepreneurship, but are also externally expected and internally committed to breeding innovative start-up companies. Based on a number of secondary data sources, the authors argue that research universities and UASs are characterised by a number of idiosyncratic features that shape both the quantity and quality of Knowledge and Technology-Based (KTB) start-up activity in specific ways. Separate analyses of the determinants of academic entrepreneurship at 86 research universities and 99 UASs suggest that research universities and UASs bear complementary functions for innovative start-up activity in the German innovation system. The article concludes with implications for future research on the processes underlying academic start-up generation.

Academic Inventiveness and Entrepreneurship: On the Importance of Start-up Companies in Commercializing Academic Patents

This article presents research that places the academic start-up phenomenon in the broader technology transfer context. Drawing on data on Finnish academic inventions, the paper illustrates that a considerable share of university-related patents are utilized in start up companies but that still most academic patents are utilized in established and predominantly large firms. Differences in utilization patterns are explored for different fields of science and technology.