Abstract
The choice of university faculty to engage in academic entrepreneurship—the establishment and management of a university spinoff company—is a critical component of university economic development efforts. Replicating Hayter (J Technol Transf 36:340–352, 2011), this study investigates motivations and definitions of success among academic entrepreneurs, how they evolve, and why. The results show that academic entrepreneurs are motivated by a number of distinct, yet interrelated reasons and that spinoffs are viewed as a vehicle to pursue SBIR awards and consulting opportunities that can, in turn, enhance their traditional academic teaching and research responsibilities. Several academic entrepreneurs have enjoyed commercialization success yet, as a group, near-term commercialization goals and financial motivations have become relatively less important. While these findings have important implications for policy, they also signal a new conceptualization of university spinoffs as a low-growth contract research firm and provide empirical support for the emerging theory of public entrepreneurship.
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Notes
Leyden and Link (2015) refer to public sector entrepreneurship in the context of their discussion about US technology and innovation policies as initiatives that generate greater economic prosperity by transforming a status-quo economic environment into one that is more conducive to economic units engaging in creative activities in the face of uncertainty.
Located in northern Italy, the region borders the Adriatic Sea and includes the cities of Bologna, Parma, and Ferrara.
In their review of the ‘spinout’ literature, Djokovic and Souitaris (2008) find that the early studies debated the efficacy of part-time faculty entrepreneurs compared to those who left their academic positions while more recent debates focus on the importance of surrogate entrepreneurs.
Lowe’s (2006) model of university invention development anticipated the translational research role of university spinoffs; he posited that inventions associated with high levels of tacit knowledge will typically be developed via inventor-founded start-up firms though he did not indicate how this would occur. Similarly, Karnani (2013) discusses the role of ‘tacit knowledge start-ups’ and their importance for innovation.
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Hayter, C.S. Public or private entrepreneurship? Revisiting motivations and definitions of success among academic entrepreneurs. J Technol Transf 40, 1003–1015 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-015-9426-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-015-9426-7