Spin-off Process and the Development of Academic Entrepreneur’s Social Capital

Abstract

So far, there has been very little in-depth research on how the spin-off process contributes to the development of academic entrepreneurs' social capital. In this inductive, exploratory and qualitative study, we examine eight academic entrepreneurship case studies. Based on our findings, we propose three mechanisms to explain the contribution of the spinoff process. They are the entrepreneurs´ affiliation with the university, the entrepreneurs´ immersion in the university´s network of relationships, and the new venture creation preparation given to the entrepreneurs by the university.

Success Factors for Creating Spin-Out Companies by South African Publicly Financed Research and Development Institutions: A Resource-Based View Perspective

“…As a first point, spin-out Company working definition had to be established. This was done by looking at several authors that made attempts to define the concept of a spin-out company within the context of publicly funded R&D (Pirnay et al, 2003;Borges and Fillion, 2013;Pattnaik and Pandey, 2014). In defining the concept, there appears to be a pattern which reflects that the definition of a spin-out company is sometimes interchangeably defined with other concepts such as spin-off companies or university start-ups or academic enterprises.…”

Organizational dynamic embeddedness and external shocks: The impact of financial and recession crises in strategic networks of the global pharmaceutical industry

“…Social networks have been defined as relational structures formed by interactions between social actors where each individual is represented by a node, and a tie between two nodes represents whether an interaction has occurred or a relationship exists between the individuals during the observation time [2,11].…”

The Sources of Competitive Advantage in University Spin-Offs: a Case Study

“…As a favored mechanism through which universities transfer technology to the business world, University Spin-Off firms (USOs), also called "Academic Spin-Offs" (Borges and Filion, 2013;Freitas, et al, 2011), are increasingly becoming a significant global phenomenon in many different regions, including the United States and Western Europe (Shane, 2004). There are many different ways to describe University Spin-Offs: research-related startup ventures formed by university faculty staff, students or post-docs; firms created around a university license of intellectual property, or around research conducted at the university; startup firms that arise exploiting joint research projects with the university.…”

“…A University Spin-Off is based on several variables, including the type of university sponsorship, the involvement of the university in the formation of the firm, the level of knowledge applied, the co-localization of the founders, the professional background of the spinoff leader and possible partnerships with other companies. Generally faculty staff and/or students can be involved in the creation of USOs (Borges and Filion, 2013), but the leader of the spinoff may not necessarily be a member of the university community.…”