Evolving missions and university entrepreneurship: academic spin-offs and graduate start-ups in the entrepreneurial society

Abstract

A recent call has urged to broaden the conceptualization of university entrepreneurship in order to appreciate the heterogeneity of contexts and actors involved in the process of entrepreneurial creation. A gap still persists in the understanding of the variety of ventures generated by different academic stakeholders, and the relationships between these entrepreneurial developments and university missions, namely, teaching and research. This paper addresses this particular gap by looking at how university teaching and research activities influence universities' entrepreneurial ventures such as academic spin-offs and graduate start-ups. Empirically, we analyse the English higher education sector, drawing on institutional data at the university level. First, we explore the ways in which teaching and research activities are configured, and secondly, we examine how such configurations relate to academic spin-offs and graduate start-ups across different universities over time. Our findings suggest, first, that the evolution of USOs and graduate start-ups exhibit two different pathways over time; and second, that teaching and research both affect entrepreneurial ventures but their effect is different.

Opening the black box of academic entrepreneurship: a bibliometric analysis

“…Additionally, a vital research direction calling for future studies focuses on a development of effective support mechanisms and strategic decisions in entrepreneurial universities fostering academic entrepreneurship. For instance, there is a lack of studies addressing the impact of strategic choices regarding the type of support for university spinoffs and student/young graduate start-ups, and more deeper investigation of university's entrepreneurial mission determining the level of support and entrepreneurial outcomes (Marzocchi et al 2017). Another promising avenue for future studies addresses the impact and effectiveness of TTO's.…”

“…Acknowledging the strong interest in academic entrepreneurship in the past years, university spinoffs (USOs) and entrepreneurial academics are increasingly considered as great potential sources of new and often disruptive innovations. Grounded in scientific discoveries, they contribute to the innovative capacity and economic development of regions and countries (Bienkowska et al 2016;Galan-Muros et al 2017;Marzocchi et al 2017;Perkmann et al 2013). Thus, understanding the process and potential impacts of academic entrepreneurship, broadly understood as commercialization of scientific research results, becomes crucial for academics, practitioners, and policymakers (Balven et al 2018;Fini et al 2018;Sandström et al 2018).…”

The Emerging Effect of Outside Directors on the Financial Performance of Italian University Spin-Offs

“…The last decade show a growing attention of the literature to the growth dynamics of academic entrepreneurship, i.e. university spin-offs (USOs), that are new technology-based firms (NTBFs) usuallywith a small size and established with the support of the university institution and its members, basically professors, researchers, PhD students, as well as undergraduate and graduate students (Miranda et al, 2018;Hunady et al, 2019;Marzocchi et al, 2019). This form of university venture represents a prospective effective tool in encouraging the generation of socio-economic value, innovation and the expansion of knowledge-based economies (Maier and Birca, 2015).…”

Towards an integrated understanding of university research commercialisation: a university spin-off perspective

“…Additionally, a vital research direction calling for future studies focuses on a development of effective support mechanisms and strategic decisions in entrepreneurial universities fostering academic entrepreneurship. For instance, there is a lack of studies addressing the impact of strategic choices regarding the type of support for university spin-offs and student/young graduate start-ups, and more deeper investigation of university's entrepreneurial mission determining the level of support and entrepreneurial outcomes (Marzocchi et al 2017).…”

“…Acknowledging the strong interest in academic entrepreneurship in the past years, university spinoffs (USOs) and entrepreneurial academics are increasingly considered as great potential sources of new and often disruptive innovations. Grounded in scientific discoveries, they contribute to the innovative capacity and economic development of regions and countries (Bienkowska et al 2016;Galán-Muros et al 2017;Marzocchi et al 2017;Perkmann et al 2013).Thus, understanding the process and potential impacts of academic entrepreneurship, broadly understood as commercialization of scientific research results, becomes crucial for academics, practitioners, and policymakers (Balven et al 2018;Fini et al 2017Fini et al , 2018Sandström et al 2018).…”