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Passion and interest are the two principal drivers of competitive capitalism, and reconciling the two is conducive to a dynamic and welfare-generating economic system. On the level of the individual, the same categories can be applied to examining, for example, career choices, at times violating propositions regarding rational expectations as some categories of work include lower economic compensation or higher levels of risk than would be attractive to the median job applicant. The purpose of this paper is to examine how venture workers, employees of life, thinly capitalize science ventures, justify their career choices and how they act in order to create economic security for themselves and their families.

The study is based on a qualitative data collection methodology and reports on empirical research material from a study of co-workers at life science start-ups. The sample includes salaried employees working at venture capital-backed start-up companies in the life science sector.

The study indicates that passionate preferences regarding, for example, meaningful work in collaboration with peers, and the ability to participate in the creation of a new venture, have overshadowed the downside risks and the lower level of economic compensation vis-à-vis comparable work. Such findings indicate that deeply meaningful work is a useful analytical category, and that combinations of the favorable market pricing of skills and experiences, as well as state-funded welfare mechanisms, cushioning some of the market risk that employees are exposed to, will provide opportunities for venture labor, i.e. work done at thinly capitalized firms, such as start-ups, per se contributing to a dynamic industry.

The study contributes to the innovation management literature as it examines the key role of salaried venture workers, i.e. workers that do not hold contracts, granting them the right to compensation when venture capital investors make an exit. In addition, the study also discusses the literature on deeply meaningful work, stressing that this is a useful analytical category.

Life science innovation is a complex domain of professional work including scientific know-how, regulatory expertise, and commercialization and marketing skills. While the investment in basic life science research has soared over the last decades, resulting in a substantial growth in scientific know-how, the life science industry (and most notably pharmaceutical companies) unfortunately reports a meagre innovative output. In order to counteract waning innovation productivity, new organizational initiatives seek to better bridge and bond existing life science resources. The purpose of this paper is to report a case study of bio venture hub initiative located in a major multinational pharmaceutical company.

Drawing on institutional work literature, an empirical study based on case study methodology demonstrates that new life science collaborations demand both external and internal institutional work to challenge conventional wisdom, making the legal protection of intellectual properties a key factor in the field and that in turn complicates much firm collaborations. Such institutional work questions existing practices and opens up new pathways in life science innovation work.

The bio hub initiative, which in considerable ways breaks with the traditional in-house and new drug development activities located in enclosed R&D departments and in collaboration with clinical research organizations, demands extensive institutional work and political savoir-faire to create legitimacy and operational stability. Not only are there practical, legal, and regulatory issues to handle, but the long-term legitimacy and financial stability of the bio hub initiative demands support from both internal and external significant actors and stakeholders. The external institutional work in turn demands a set of skills in the bio venture hub’s management team, including detailed scientific and regulatory expertise, communicative skills, and the charisma and story-telling capacities to convince and win over sceptics. The internal institutional work, in turn, demands an understanding of extant legal frameworks and fiscal policies, the ability to handle a series of practical and administrative routines (i.e. how to procure the chemicals used in the laboratory work or how to make substance libraries available), and to serve as a “match-maker” between the bio venture hub companies and the experts located at the hosting company.

The case study provides first-hand empirical data from an unique initiative in the pharmaceutical industry to create novel collaborative spaces where small-sized life science companies can take advantage of the mature firm’s expertise and stock of know-how, also benefitting the hosting company as new collaborations unfold and providing a detailed understanding of ongoing life science innovation projects. In this view, all agencies embedded in institutional field (i.e. what has been addressed as “institutional work” – the active work to create, maintain, or disrupt institutions) both to some extent destabilize existing practise and create new practices better aligned with new conditions and relations between relevant and mutually dependent organizations. The empirical study supports the need for incorporating the concept of agency in institutional theory and thus contributes to the literature on institutional work by showing how one of the industries, the pharmaceutical industry, being strongly fortified by intellectual property rights (i.e. a variety of patents), inhibiting the free sharing of scientific and regulatory know-how and expertise, is in fact now being in the process of rethinking the “closed-doors” tradition of the industry. That is, the institutional work conducted in the bio venture hub is indicative of new ideas entering Big Pharma.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of R&D resources in early stage life sciences firms. It looks at how young firms use dynamic capabilities to develop R&D resources.

An in-depth case study approach was used to examine the research questions. It draws on longitudinal data collected from ten life science firms. Data were collected from three rounds of interviews with each case firm. A systematic theme analysis was conducted to analyse the results.

Results from the study indicate that a unique set of past decisions, future opportunities, assets, capabilities, and routines leads to the development of R&D resources. It is evident that scientific breakthroughs, partnership opportunities, the founders’ experience and the firm’s ability to integrate resources and learn from earlier paths are vital to the development of R&D resources.

This study extends the application of the dynamic capabilities framework to early stage life sciences ventures. It also demonstrates that dynamic capabilities can lead to the development of important resources.

The findings from this study provide prescriptive insights for evaluating alternatives on how to develop R&D resources in life sciences ventures.

Life sciences firms are critical to the modern global economy. However, little work examines how young, small life sciences firms develop R&D resources. Moreover, little work uses the dynamic capabilities framework as a lens to holistically examine how small firms develop R&D resources. This study helps to fill those gaps.

This paper aims to explore longitudinally a life sciences international new venture’s (INV’s) development of foreign market knowledge (FMK) and how this knowledge development relates to the firm’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO).

The article adopts a longitudinal case study approach to investigate an INV in the life sciences industry.

The findings show that the EO of an INV changes during its internationalisation. A strong EO, often considered to be synonymous with the early expansion of an INV, is not always able to guide the INV in its later developmental stages. In its continued internationalisation, an INV instead needs firm-specific FMK accumulated from a process of learning by doing. The knowledge development of an INV is a time-consuming process that cannot be rushed by grafting new and experienced employees.

Future research focusing on larger and broader samples of INVs is recommended to validate this study’s results.

Life sciences managers need to develop their own firm-specific FMK by interacting with their foreign business partners.

This study contributes further insights into the FMK development processes and EO of INVs in the life sciences industry during their internationalisation. Further understanding is also provided about how the industry-specific features of an INV in the life sciences industry influence internationalisation over time. The study’s theoretical implications are that international entrepreneurship frameworks and internationalisation process theory need to be integrated to understand the longitudinal development of INVs.

Despite a growing interest in both women and university academic entrepreneurship, there are very few studies addressing women's academic entrepreneurship. The authors address this gap by focusing on university incubators for women's academic entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze the significance of university incubators for the promotion and development of women's academic business start‐ups.

The authors use a unique Swedish database for multivariate statistical tests on the performance of groups of women‐ and men‐led ventures, as well as on groups of women incubatees. The database includes data for over 1,400 ventures, out of which 210 ventures are by women entrepreneurs.

About 15 percent of the ventures in the incubators are started and managed by women entrepreneurs. Several significant differences were found between the groups, but the overall conclusion is that the Swedish incubators in this study do not show any evidence of being able to decrease the gender gap in the commercialization of university science.

The study makes three important contributions. First, it applies a multilevel design that takes into consideration the relationship between individual firms and the incubator environment. Second, the authors conducted their analysis on women academic entrepreneurs who start their ventures in incubators, which means that the authors are concerned with a specific knowledge‐intensive context, where men and women entrepreneurs possess fairly similar levels of human capital. Third, the unique database allows statistical analysis on a large data set, which provides research‐based knowledge about the conditions for entrepreneurial career development among women in academic environments.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how an entrepreneurship program in the life-sciences impacts the development of their entrepreneurial skills and values in undergraduate students.

A quantitative study was conducted at Tecnologico de Monterrey, a private university in Mexico. Questionnaires were administered to life-sciences students before and after the entrepreneurship course to analyze and identify the development of pre-defined entrepreneurial characteristics.

Results indicate a positive and significant impact on several of the 13 entrepreneurial characteristics evaluated in the study (negotiation skills, need of achievement and initiative). Empirical insights gained in the study suggest that gender does not yield to differences in the degree of involvement in activities, and that previous entrepreneurship experience may contribute to enhanced engagement in the program.

The paper reports on students from one university campus. Future research should include students from other locations in the country.

It is evident that university entrepreneurship programs have an impact on students' skills and values; however, the challenge still remains in the design of those programs to include more activities and draw on the students' own competences.

This paper contributes with evidence from an entrepreneurship program implemented in a Latin American university, a region for which documentation of the degree of success of entrepreneurship education is limited in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that contribute to the successful implementation and management of sustainable innovation in research-intensive sectors such as the life sciences industry.

The study was conducted through a combination of two methods. The first was qualitative interviews of 21 sustainability experts and leaders in the life sciences industry who were responsible for implementing sustainable innovation. They were selected through nonprobabilistic purposive sampling. The second method was thematic content analysis using the MAXQDA software.

The study identified that successful implementation of sustainable innovation in research-intensive firms begins with the alignment of the executive vision for sustainability with the business objectives of the research-intensive firm. Furthermore, implementation of sustainability practices is identified as a function of organizational reconfigurations that facilitate purposeful inflow and outflow of ideas and knowledge between internal firm resources and external stakeholders, anchored by the objectives of the research-intensive firm.

The study explicated factors only within life sciences industry based on qualitative interviews. The study offers scope for cross-sector quantitative evaluation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first studies to systematically delineate the underlying factors that govern successful implementation of sustainable innovation in research-intensive industries, through integration of the resource-based view and stakeholder theory and thereby provide a framework for research-intensive organizations to implement sustainable innovation practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gap between the resources required to build a strong biotechnology ecosystem in Nebraska and the perception of resources currently available within the state for doing so.

Using resource‐based theory along with data from a Battelle survey commissioned by BioNebraska, the authors first identify the human and financial capital needed to support a viable biotechnology industry sector, benchmarking with other regions currently undertaking such development. The authors then compare identified resource requirements with data from a survey of BioNebraska members regarding their perceptions of the importance of these resources to, and their availability within, Nebraska.

This process revealed gaps in several key resource areas that could impede the state's ability to achieve its sector development goals.

In the authors' view, understanding the gap between resources required and resources available for building a high technology industry sector, as well as benchmarking against the competition, are key first steps in developing successful economic policy.

The paper discusses the implications of gaps in several key resource areas for future success and makes recommendations for possible ways in which Nebraska decision makers might develop necessary resources. Also addressed is the importance of considering the perceptions of key stakeholders and decision makers regarding the resources required for developing knowledge industries such as biotechnology.

Building a bioeconomy requires efficient technology transfer and global linkages to exploit finite intellectual property exclusivity periods. The purpose of this paper, using a resource‐based view lens, is to assess the priorities, capabilities, and competitiveness of the emerging New Zealand (NZ) bioeconomy.

A triangulated design was used that involved four focus groups, 27 interviews, five case studies, and survey of 176 NZ biotechnology industry participants from a broad range of backgrounds such as scientists, managers, and investors.

Two high‐priority capabilities were identified as being critical to fostering a competitive bioeconomy – access to talent and access to funding. Participants also identified the critical role of government in building and coordinating infrastructure, enabling critical capabilities, and accelerating bi‐directional technology and capital flows.

Most biotechnology research and data has focused on the USA and European Union. This is one of the first studies of NZ biotechnology participants, and insights gained within this context are potentially applicable for increasing our understanding of building biotechnology industries outside established clusters.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the question: What shall we measure? and offers preliminary answers. Data for innovation management and policy must be valid, reliable, relevant and actionable.

The paper examines trends within finance, environment and institutions and society, all with regard to innovation and technology. It examines how these trends interact with each other and with measurement of innovation and socio-technical change.

In the future, measurement for innovation policy must occur in markedly different ways – and on quite different scales – than is currently the practice. The paper concludes with a future-oriented list of items to be measured, with preliminary guidelines on how to organize to measure them.

Foresight researchers must put new emphasis on measurement.

Local and national statistical agencies will have to measure new indicators and organize differently to measure them.

Voters may be eager to embrace principles and goals, though they fail to find excitement in the more tedious issues of measurement. It is incumbent on us to pay more attention to measurement, to resist governments’ and lobbyists’ efforts to introduce special-interest bias into public statistics, and to carry the story to the public of the importance of measurement. Much of the policy change that is now needed is needed because of past and current harmful human behaviors. Nicholas Sarkozy (Press 2011) concisely stated the rationale for this paper: “We will not change our behavior unless we change the ways we measure”.

This concept paper goes beyond other indexes and proposals to identify new phenomena that must be measured. In contrast to other works which are oriented to measurement-push (toward policy), the present paper makes bold assertions about the trends needing to be addressed by policy, then proposes measurement based on policy-pull. It argues against premature worldwide statistical standards, and for Popperian “multiple engineering experiments”.The USA must “get back into the future business” – President Bill Clinton, at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2012.