Exploring Entrepreneurial Activity at Cape Town and Stellenbosch Universities, South Africa

Abstract

<jats:p> Entrepreneurial activity at universities, especially spin-off formation, has emerged as an important mechanism for accelerating the transfer of technology and knowledge to commercial markets. With some exceptions, such as China, studies on university entrepreneurship have tended to concentrate on the experiences of developed countries. Perhaps because of the lack of a comprehensive database of university spin-offs, studies on experience in South Africa have typically included spin-offs only as part of a broad examination of university–industry partnerships, technology transfer mechanisms or academic entrepreneurship. This study is based on a questionnaire and interview survey of spin-offs at Cape Town and Stellenbosch Universities. The results suggest that the most important reasons cited for spin-off formation are market opportunities and a desire for commercial exploitation of knowledge and experience. As with university spin-off founders elsewhere, funding is regarded as the most significant problem, followed by such factors as recruiting skilled people, lack of facilities, product marketing and time pressure. It is argued that this exploratory study provides lessons and insights that will inform similar, future research on a larger scale. </jats:p>

Academic entrepreneurship in South East Asia: an exploratory study of spin-offs in biotechnology from Hong Kong universities

“…Chiesa and Piccaluga (2000), for example, in their research on Italian spin-offs, found that the majority of the founders' motivations (nearly 60%) were pull factors such as identifying market opportunities and applying their knowledge to practical applications. Jafta and Uctu (2009) found similar rankings of motivations for the Western Cape university spin-off firms in South Africa. Kondo (2004) conducted a first survey on the university spin-off companies in Japan and found that the primary motive in founding a company is to put invented technologies to practical use.…”

Spinning-off or Licensing?

“…As already noted, the main reason given was lack of funding, followed by commercialization, distribution and estimation of market demand. Jafta and Uctu (2009) found support for the significant role played by funding in this decision in earlier research on spin-offs. They examined the major problems that spin-off companies encountered at two South African universities and found that, apart from funding, factors such as recruiting skilled people, a lack of facilities, the task of marketing the developed products and time constraints all played a part in deterring the spin-off decision (Jafta and Uctu, 2009).…”

“…Jafta and Uctu (2009) found support for the significant role played by funding in this decision in earlier research on spin-offs. They examined the major problems that spin-off companies encountered at two South African universities and found that, apart from funding, factors such as recruiting skilled people, a lack of facilities, the task of marketing the developed products and time constraints all played a part in deterring the spin-off decision (Jafta and Uctu, 2009). Furthermore, Kamariah et al (2011) and Nelsen (2007) point out that university-generated technologies are often still at an embryonic stage and will require substantial investment of time, money and skills to be made market-ready.…”

“…In the context of this chain of decision-making (Figure 3), previous research, which examined academic entrepreneurial activities focusing on spin-off creation at Cape Town and Stellenbosch universities (Jafta and Uctu, 2009), gave rise to some interesting questions: for instance, why academic researchers who are in a position to create a spin-off choose not to do so; and, what motivates researchers to license their technologies. This case study attempts to answer these questions.…”

Technology transfer models of universities and public research organisations in South Africa: changes before and after the IPR-PFRD Act of 2008

“…Another important indicators is to look at the number of start-ups created by the universities. University spin-offs (also called university entrepreneurship, academic spin-offs and academic entrepreneurship) has been studied by many researchers in South Africa (see for instance Jafta and Uctu, 2013;Rorwana and Tengeh, 2015;Urban and Chanston, 2019) and is seen as an important factor that promotes innovation.…”