Academic Start-ups Research Articles

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.

Nature Biotechnology's academic spinouts of 2016.

Our annual survey highlights several academic startups developing immunotherapies as well as ventures focusing on microbiomes, proteostasis, integrin biology, nucleic acid delivery and subcellular imaging.

Competitive strategies of knowledge and innovation commercialization: a unified swot and fuzzy ahp approach

Universities have shown a strong desire to commercialize researches and innovations. As a result, they are increasingly weaning themselves from public budgets. Commercialization has become the gateway for privatization, but the improper selection of commercialization strategies often results in the elimination of resources and time. The correct evaluation and ranking of strategies for the best resources is essential for the competitive performance of a university. The hybrid SWOT and Fuzzy AHP model adopted in this study provides a clear categorization of these university strategies. The first and relevant criteria as well as sub-criteria are identified using SWOT analysis. Fuzzy AHP tool is then used to evaluate and rank the internal and external factors that affect competition in Iranian universities. Based on the IE matrix, the growth and the process of building strategies are important priorities when considering commercializing. The results of this study revealed that academic startups, joint technology, joint research laboratories, strategic alliances, recruiting pundit and contracting with industry are the best strategies for Iranian universities.

Innovative academic startups 2016.

Innovative academic startups 2016.

Determinants of Academic Startups’ Orientation toward International Business Expansion

This study explores the determinants of academic startups’ orientation toward international business expansion, focusing on their technological capabilities, availability of public support, the regional characteristics of their locations, and the research standards of their parent universities. Using unique survey data on 448 academic startups in Japan and by estimating an ordered logit model, we find that academic startups are strongly oriented toward expanding their businesses internationally if they have strong technological capabilities, receive public support, are established in regions with a high ratio of exporting small firms, or are affiliated with a parent university with an excellent research reputation.

Innovative academic startups 2016

Innovative academic startups 2016

Innovative academic startups 2015.

Innovative academic startups 2015.

Flying the nest: how the home department shapes researchers’ career paths

This paper studies the importance of the socialization environment – nest – for the career destinations of early career researchers. In a sample of research groups in the fields of science and engineering at universities in Germany, we identify research orientation, output, funding as well as openness to industry and commercialization as relevant components. Nests that attract more public funding and are led by professors with high research performance are more likely to produce researchers who take jobs in public research, while links to industry predict jobs in the private sector. In a more nuanced analysis that differentiates between types of industry employment, we find that larger firms also recruit from groups with higher scientific performance, while small and medium-sized firms recruit from nests with a higher patent productivity. A focus on experimental development instead is associated with academic start-ups, and an applied focus with employment in consulting. Recommendations for research training are discussed.

Parent universities and the location of academic startups

Academic startups are thought to locate in their parent university’s home region because being in the vicinity of a university provides cost advantages in accessing academic knowledge and resources. In this paper we analyze the importance of a different mechanism, namely, social ties between academic entrepreneurs and university researchers, for enabling and facilitating the access to academic knowledge and resources, and therefore for the location of academic startups. We employ unique data on academic startups from regions with more than one university and find that only the parent university influences academic entrepreneurs’ decisions to stay in the region while other universities in the same region play no role. Our findings suggest that the mere local availability of a university may not per se guarantee access to knowledge and resources; social ties are additionally required. The importance of social ties implies that academic knowledge and resources are not necessarily local public good. This holds implications for universities’ role in stimulating regional development.

An Assessment of the Determinants of University Technology Transfer

We study the extent to which the characteristics of universities and technology transfer offices located within different regional contexts affect the transfer of scientific knowledge, both in the form of licensing and spin-off firm creation. By using data from Spain for the period 2005 to 2008, we show that technology transfer offices with more experienced and expert staff teams and universities with clearly established rules for creating academic startups and with higher patenting records are more likely to obtain better university technology transfer results (i.e., licensing and spin-off firm outcomes). Although the effects of R&D investment and venture capital available in the local region were not significant, the (subnational) regional context seemed to matter for explaining the variation in academic spin-off and licensing outcomes across universities.

Heterogeneity in Entrepreneurial Origins: Implications for Firm Formation and Performance

The presenter symposium is a compilation of four papers that examine how knowledge contexts shape firm formation and performance, with a focus on academic, employee and user entrepreneurship. The symposium includes one paper on each knowledge context, and a fourth paper that conceptually synthesizes and integrates across all three. Collectively, the papers cover both breadth and depth of issues that relate to how heterogeneity in entrepreneurial origins impacts firm formation as a vehicle for transforming innovations to economic value. In doing so, the symposium is of interest to the membership of BPS, ENT and TIM since it examines the interplay of strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation. User-Industry Spin-Outs: Downstream Knowledge As A Driver Entry And Survival Presenter: Franco Malerba; Bocconi U. Presenter: Pamela Adams; Franklin College To Market, Market: Founding Team Structure and Commercialization Success of Academic Start-Ups Presenter: Jeff Savage; U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Pre...

The influence of team heterogeneity on team processes of multi-person ventures: an empirical analysis of highly innovative academic start-ups

In current publications on start ups founded by more than one person contradictory and inconsistent results are presented regarding the outcome of team heterogeneity on venture performance. This can be traced back to the inconsistent measurement of team heterogeneity. Harrison and Klein (2007) present a theoretical concept, which divides heterogeneity into three forms: separation, variety and disparity. The aim of this paper is to test empirically this theoretical concept. We analyse the influence of the three introduced types of heterogeneity on team processes which further correlate with venture performance and show that different types of heterogeneity influence team processes in different ways. By doing this, we apply multi-level models to consider the level structure of our data. The data consists of 59 technology orientated academic start-ups from Austria, supported by academic incubator programmes.

The contribution of university research to the growth of academic start-ups: an empirical analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyze empirically under which circumstances the universities located in a geographical area contribute to the growth of a special category of local new technology-based firms (NTBFs), those established by academic personnel (academic start-ups, ASUs). We examine the effects of a series of characteristics of local universities on the growth rates of ASUs and we compare them with the effects of the same university characteristics on the growth of other (i.e., non-academic) NTBFs. In the empirical part of the paper, we estimate an augmented Gibrat law panel data model using a longitudinal dataset composed of 487 Italian NTBFs observed from 1994 to 2003. Out of these NTBFs 48 are ASUs. The results of the econometric estimates suggest that universities do influence the growth rates of local ASUs, while the effects on the growth rates of other NTBFs are negligible. In particular, the scientific quality of the research performed by universities has a positive effect on the growth rates of ASUs; conversely the commercial orientation of research has a negative effect. These results indicate that universities producing high-quality scientific research have a beneficial impact on the growth of local high-tech start-ups, but only if these firms are able to detect, absorb, and use this knowledge. In this perspective, a greater commercial orientation of university research leading to a reduction of the knowledge available for absorption by these companies, can be detrimental.

Employment Growth in Newly Established Firms - Is There Evidence for Academic Entrepreneur's Human Capital Depreciation?

This paper contributes to the literature of academic entrepreneurship by investigating the effect of a possible depreciation of academic knowledge after leaving the university. The possibility of a person's human capital depreciation has up to now mainly been used to explain forgone earnings due to career interruption spells. Since the human capital endowment of a firm’s founder has been shown to be a major determinant of new firm’s success, human capital depreciation might matter for young firm’s early growth prospects. This study is a first attempt in investigating if academic knowledge depreciates after leaving university and affects a start-up's employment growth in early years. The empirical analysis is based on a comprehensive firm level data-set of more than 4,000 academic start-ups founded between 2001 and 2006 in the research- and knowledge-intensive industries in Germany. The depreciation of academic knowledge is investigated by quantifying the effect of the time period which elapses after the founder has left university until the start-up is founded. During that time professional experience and industry knowledge is accumulated while academic knowledge depreciates. Using quantile regressions, human capital is found to be of crucial importance for both ordinary academic start-ups and academic spin-offs (i.e. new firms commercializing academic research results), the founders of the latter suffering even more from human capital depreciation. Additionally, further determinants of young firms’ employment growth are examined along the whole distribution of growth rates. Initial size and age is found to determine employment growth in most of the quantile regressions. This means that Gibrat's Law, stating that the initial size of a firm and its growth rate are independent, can be rejected along wide parts of the distribution of young firm's employment growth. This result is a material contribution to the literature of young firm’s growth since the validity of Gibrat's Law was mainly tested in the conditional mean framework. I find that some factors, e.g. founding a firm in a team or having been hosted in a science park, are of higher relevance for firms in the lower part of the growth distribution, while other prominent factors, such as exporting, continuous R&D and a limitation of liability, are most important for high-growing firms.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Academic Startups: A Conceptual Model

This paper aims to extend our understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses of academic startups (ASUs) and other new technology-based firms (NTBFs). First, relying on insights from the resource- and competence-based theories of the firm and the literature on social networks and financial economics, we identify the factors that might differentiate ASUs and other NTBFs. Then, we combine the results of prior studies on NTBFs and the evidence from four theory-building case studies of Italian ASUs to formulate a series of empirically testable hypotheses that relate to the differences between ASUs and other NTBFs as to the extent and nature of the initial funding and knowledge gaps, and the strategies that firms adopt to close them. Our analysis suggests that ASUs' major relative strengths reside in the lower initial funding gap and greater investments in technical activities. Conversely, ASUs' major weakness consists of the lack of commercial knowledge: ASUs suffer from greater initial gaps in this field and encounter serious obstacles in implementing effective strategies to close them. The paper also offers original insights relating to the impact of the appropriability regime of technology on the financing and alliance strategies of ASUs as opposed to those of other NTBFs. More specifically, when the appropriability regime is weak, ASUs' choices as to the characteristics of external investors and alliance partners, and the organisation of the relations with them are influenced by the desire to mitigate appropriability hazards. Conversely, appropriability hazards have a smaller influence on the decisions of non-ASU NTBFs.

Evolution on the Shoulders of Giants: Entrepreneurship and Firm Survival in the German Laser Industry

This paper studies 40 years of evolution in the German laser industry, which developed in the context of strong foreign competition. Key characteristics found in the U.S. laser industry are also present in Germany. There is sustained entry into the industry, and neither a shakeout nor first-mover advantages of early entrants are observed. Similar to the U.S. industry, spin-offs from existing laser firms have been more long-lived than have been academic startups. An analysis of the spin-off process indicates the importance of specific capabilities acquired at the parent firm.

Academics' organizational characteristics and the generation of successful business ideas

This paper deals with the generation of Business Ideas (BI) by academics. It investigates organizational factors affecting the process through which new ventures are established by academics and are likely to affect their performance. The BI Market Attractiveness and the BI Articulation are addressed as two characteristics of academic spin-off companies which are likely to lead to their success. Two research hypotheses are formulated: (a) that the BI Market Attractiveness at the time of establishment of the new venture is positively influenced by the market orientation of the academic founders, and by their frequency of interaction with external agents; (b) that the BI Articulation at the time of establishment of the new venture is positively affected by the articulation of roles, and by the degree of prior joint experience of the academic founders. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 42 Italian academic start-ups. Implications for both universities and academic entrepreneurs are discussed.