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The purpose of this paper is threefold. It is aimed at identifying: a broad set of entrepreneurial activities; different university entrepreneurial models; and the entrepreneurial best practices of advanced European S&T universities.

The paper has adopted a mixed-method design. By mainly relying on primary data, collected through questionnaires and interviews with those in charge of the technology transfer offices of 20 universities belonging to the CESAER association, the empirical analysis has combined both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

The results of the empirical analysis have allowed five entrepreneurial activities to be identified. Three main entrepreneurial university models, based on different configurations of entrepreneurial activities, on different organisational and ecosystem characteristics and on a set of entrepreneurial best practices: an “engage” model, which focusses on local economic development; a “formal” model, which focusses on the financial advantage of universities and their faculties; and a “comprehensive” model, which focusses on the local economic development and the financial advantage of universities and their faculties.

The first limitation of the present paper concerns the limited number of sampled universities. Moreover, this paper is limited to the European area. Future research could enlarge this study by increasing the number of universities and by focusing on other geographical areas. Furthermore, the paper does not assess the effectiveness of the identified entrepreneurial models in supporting entrepreneurship and local economic development. Further research could extend the present analysis and fill these gaps.

The paper contributes to the extant literature under many respects. First, it relies on original primary data. Moreover, it extends previous literature by encompassing the conventional distinction between formal and informal entrepreneurial activities. It also contributes to the emerging literature on entrepreneurial university models and the strategic approaches by identifying the different models of entrepreneurial universities in the European setting of S&T universities focusing on the role played by organisational and regional factors in affecting the adoption of a specific model by universities.

This paper analyzes the importance given by venture capital (VC) firms to the different characteristics of the patent portfolio of a young innovative company (YIC). In an attempt to go beyond previous studies, the authors argue that not only is the size of a technological portfolio significant but also its nature. It is also examined whether the correlation between patents and VC financing varies across different industrial sectors and over different rounds of VC investments.

The empirical analysis has focused on a sample of 1,096 European YICs between the years 2010 and 2014. Target companies were identified in the monthly bulletins of Go4Venture, which reported the largest European deals and gathered information on the amount of VC financing. Additional data was derived from FinSMEs and crunchbase. Industrial sectors were differentiated according to their ability to appropriate the returns of innovation by relying on patent protection mechanisms. A multivariate regression framework at the patent family level was adopted to investigate empirical associations between the amount of VC financing and the characteristics of a YIC's patent portfolio.

The results confirm the positive value of patents. Both the size and the characteristics of a YIC patent portfolio have been found to be positively associated with the total amount of VC financing. Additionally, the correlation between a YIC patent portfolio and VC investment varies across industries and over rounds of funding. Although the number of patents is positively correlated with VC investments in sectors with strong Intellectual Property (IP) regimes, the same does not apply to sectors characterized by lower patent intensity, where qualitative metrics seem to have a stronger correlation. Significant differences have also been found for the different rounds of VC investments.

The limitations of this paper are related to data availability. Empirical associations have been investigated, but causal effects cannot be ascertained in this framework. The authors focused on a sample of firms that received VC funding. Several transactions were excluded, due to a lack of specifications pertaining to the round series. Furthermore, a number of potential drivers of the financed amounts, such as variables related to the founder or the management team, have not been considered in this study.

For firms operating in sectors with weak IP regimes, patents are positively associated with attracting equity capital, if they are the output of R&D collaborations and have higher technical merit. In industries where patent intensity is higher, patent portfolio size matters more than quality. This suggests that VC investors award innovation quality to cases in which patenting is less frequent. Since the results indicate that positive associations between patenting and VC financing are more significant in later stages, managers should plan their patenting strategy in advance to reap the related benefits, and then collect the premium at later VC stages.

In this paper, the importance given by VC firms to different characteristics of a YIC patent portfolio has been analyzed in terms of size, quality, and complexity. While previous empirical analyses mainly focused on a single sector, the authors have examined whether the relevance of patents for VC financing decisions varies across industries and over different rounds of investment. The geographical coverage of the sample is another novelty of the paper. Previous works focused on a limited number of countries, whereas this research has considered firms operating in several European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors affecting the growth of companies listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), the London Stock Exchange market for young and growing companies.

The author investigates post-initial public offering (IPO) growth for a panel of 665 companies listed on the AIM between 1995 and 2006. The empirical model uses the generalized method of moment-System (GMM-SYS) estimator.

The findings confirm that small companies listed on the AIM grow more quickly after the IPO. It seems that both human capital and firm characteristics are important determinants of their rapid growth.

The results of this study have some implications for policy. Policy makers should take account of the relevance of an efficient financial system. It is important also to consider the process of transformation of the cultural and behavioural attitudes of various countries towards entrepreneurship.

This paper analyses the determinants of firm growth in a particular entrepreneurial setting, that is, IPO on the AIM, the sub-market of the London Stock Exchange.

Purpose – This chapter aims at exploring the effects of globalization on technological change by focusing on the determinants of the direction of technological change at the firm level of analysis by following the induced technological change approach implemented by the localized technological change hypothesis.

Methodology/approach – In the empirical analysis, we proxy the direction of technological change by means of the changes in the output elasticity of capital and analyze how it is affected by the changes in factor market costs and firms' attributes for a panel of 1,113 companies listed on UK and the main continental Europe financial markets for the period 1995–2003.

Findings – We find that small firms are more likely to introduce capital-intensive technological changes while large firms will introduce skill-intensive technological changes.

Research limitations/implications – Our model provides a clear analytical framework that interprets the growing skill intensity of the advanced economies as the result of the introduction of new technologies induced by the growing globalization and biased by the characteristics and the types of innovation strategies of the firms.

Originality/value of paper – In so doing, the chapter adds to the existing literature in that it first explores the effects of globalization upon factor markets and, second, it investigates the effects of the direction of technological change within a microeconomic perspective.