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The purpose of this paper is to identify different program models supporting the creation of spin‐offs at universities, analyzes the characteristics that differentiate them, and identifies the factors that determine their effectiveness.

The analysis was performed using data collected through a survey targeting the heads of spin‐off support programs at universities in the UK and Spain. The authors then applied factorial and cluster analysis techniques and a logistic regression analysis to the data to confirm the results.

The analysis identified three types of spin‐off support programs in these universities. Among these, the authors found one that appears to be the most effective model. The authors also found a certain “country effect” on the characteristics of the most effective model. Finally, the authors noted the importance the literature places on university R&D activity and the existence of a favorable environment for the performance of spin‐off programs.

This research is limited by the use of number of spin‐offs and survival rate as performance indicators for support programs. Future research should consider the effective contributions to economic growth and the extent to which such effects are related to university‐level policies.

The typology of the spin‐off support programs identified here provides insight for recommendations to improve less‐effective models.

This study contributes to the understanding of the role of university policy measures in spin‐off support program effectiveness, and of how the environment influences these policies.

Este estudio identifica diferentes modelos de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs en las universidades, analiza sus características diferenciadoras e identifica los factores que determinan su eficacia.

El análisis se ha realizado a partir de los datos recabados a través de una encuesta, dirigida a responsables de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs en universidades del Reino Unido y España. A continuación se ha aplicado un análisis cluster y un análisis de regresión logística para confirmar sus resultados.

El análisis ha identificado tres tipos de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs en estas universidades. Entre éstos se ha encontrado uno que parece ser el modelo más eficaz. También se ha encontrado un cierto “efecto país” en las características del modelo más eficaz. Finalmente se ha podido confirmar la importancia dada por la literatura a la actividad de I+D de la universidad y a la existencia de un entorno favorable para el éxito de estos programas.

Esta investigación está limitada por el uso del número de spin‐offs y la tasa de supervivencia como indicadores de rendimiento de estos programas de apoyo. La futura investigación debe considerar su contribución efectiva al crecimiento económico y el grado en el que estos efectos se relacionan con las políticas a nivel universitario.

La tipología de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs identificada permite realizar algunas recomendaciones para la mejora de los modelos menos eficaces.

Este studio contribuye a la comprensión del papel de las medidas de política universitaria en la eficacia de los programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs y de la influencia del entorno sobre estas políticas.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate contingency factors on the emergence of university spin-off firms. The institutional and organisational factors the paper explores comprise the transfer potential of the university, the strategy and characteristics of the University Technology Transfer Organisations and specific support for spin-off formation.

Based on a unique data set, this cross-sectional study analyses the population of 54 higher education institutions in Germany. At this, 31.4 per cent of the German universities with technology transfer activities participated in this study.

The research identifies a high degree of heterogeneity in the qualification of University Technology Transfer Offices (UTTO) staff and the existence of an entrepreneurship support programme as important antecedents of spin-off formation. In addition, the results reveal that pursuing different or multiple transfer strategies will not be detrimental to the establishment of spin-offs.

It seems that there is still a lack of consensus with respect to the importance of spin-offs as an effective channel to transform research results into economic value. Furthermore, universities aiming at the promotion of spin-offs need appropriate regulations which do not jeopardise the usage of research outcomes for entrepreneurial purposes.

This study contributes to enhance the knowledge on what promotes and inhibits the formation of university spin-off firms, as it first analyses a considerable population of UTTOs in Germany and explicitly considers underexplored and new contingency factors.

The paper is concerned with spin‐off firms and the process by which a new firm is created and formed from a university. The objectives are to examine characteristics of firms generated by this process, and the intensity of the spin‐off firms' network activity with the parent organisation and the local environment during this process.

The findings are based on a case‐study consisting out of three firms spun‐off from a research centre at Linköping University in the area of visualisation and computer graphics. The source data are gathered from semi‐structured interviews. No generalisation should be drawn from this study due to the small number of firms interviewed and the scope of the technological area addressed.

The results show the importance of collaboration between the university spin‐off, with both the parental organisation and outside organisms, to acquire external competencies in the technological area. The parental organisation plays a pivotal role in the spin‐off process, especially in its early stage where its catalyses the emergence of the business idea by supporting the spin‐off firm with infrastructure and expertise in a specific field of mentorship. However, as the spin‐off evolves, this pre‐incubation service complements yet more support services of municipality and region, which stand to be more important in the technological and business development of the spin‐off.

University spin‐offs have an important place in the innovation process, but their promotion must be part of a wider policy package encouraging networking not only with the host university, but with industry and the public sector as well. For universities and public research organisations, it is advisable to take a more active role in the spin‐off process beyond the pre‐incubation stage.

The purpose of this paper is to combine studies that describe the spin-off creation process with studies that analyze spin-off determinants to understand the phenomenon of spin-off development.

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to improve our understanding of academic spin-off development in southern Italy. Following a systematic combining approach, the framework is constructed by iteratively matching the concepts derived by the literature on spin-off processes and spin-off determinants with the empirical findings obtained through a case study of 19 spin-offs in southern Italy.

The combination of empirical results and literature analysis helps us to identify a general model for spin-off creation that could be particularly useful to explain the criticalities of their development.

This paper provides implications for policy-makers in southern Italy regarding factors for which intervention would support the creation of new spin-offs. This study also provides useful implications for policy-makers in other contexts, such as areas that may or may not be at a disadvantage.

The resulting framework represents an original contribution to the literature because it: links two aspects – the stages of spin-off creation and determinants of spin-off development – which are often considered separately in existing studies; explores factors that either impede or facilitate the different stages of spin-off development; provides a series of findings that can be successively tested in other studies; and sheds more light on the context of southern Italy, which has been investigated in only a limited number of previous studies.

The focus of this chapter is assessment of effectiveness of support infrastructure for technology-based businesses. The chapter aims to examine the effects of physical infrastructure including incubators and science parks on the level of innovation activity and performance of new technology-based firms. It reviews evidence from Western countries comparing various assessments of the impact of science parks on the firms. The chapter is set to examine the development of the science park movement in Russia; it explores the empirical evidence from a case-study university in an attempt to analyse the shortcomings in present state of the support infrastructure in Russia from point of view of technology-based companies.

As part of the Romanian Government′s plan to create a market economy, state firms are required to restructure by disaggregating, commercializing and privatizing their operations. The Government is also encouraging the development of a small and medium‐sized enterprises (SME) sector, and one of the best prospects for the creation of SMEs is for them to be spun off from state firms as they disaggregate and downsize. Among the barriers to this are the lack of experience in creating new venture spin‐offs and the lack of entrepreneurial managers to take charge of them. Suggests conceptual mapping as a means to explore implications of restructuring and opportunities for training interventions. Describes a training and development project, the key to which is the commitment of senior management to the process of change. Describes and evaluates a process‐based training programme designed for senior managers, based on the experience of six workshops for 60 participating firms in Russia.

Academic knowledge can be put to use in a commercial environment in several ways. One such mechanism to transfer knowledge to the market place is the start of a new, separate company, termed an academic spin-off company, with the aim to commercially develop and exploit the knowledge generated in the university (Fontes, 2003). In 1999, the Dutch Ministry of Economic affairs published a paper stating that the number of high-tech start-ups in the Netherlands lags behind compared to other EU countries and the United States. Subsequently, initiatives were started to stimulate commercial exploitation of knowledge generated within universities. A specific initiative by the Dutch government in the area of the Life Sciences was the so-called Biopartner programme. This was started in 2000 with the objective to enhance the business climate for start-ups in the Life Sciences and to realize 75 start-ups within 5 years (Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 1999). Actions were directed toward increasing awareness, stimulating starters, establishing facilities like a seed fund and academic incubators, and promoting the commercialization of academic knowledge within universities. A few years later, the Technopartner program and the Valorization Grant were implemented with similar instruments aiming at scientists in universities (Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2003).

This paper aims to empirically explore the influence that different factors have on the creation of university spin-offs.

This is an exploratory study that uses a multilevel design. The study follows a purposive sampling method where data are gathered from a variety of sources. The hypotheses are tested with a sample of 52 universities from the Latin American region using multiple hierarchical regression analysis.

The results indicate that entrepreneurial orientation, incubators or entrepreneurship support programs and goods market efficiency are the factors that positively influence the creation of university spin-offs.

The results of this study should be observed in light of some limitations. The sample size is an important factor, as a bigger sample could allow for examination of cross-institutional variation in the context of different countries. In addition, the lack of records or public databases makes it difficult to incorporate more information on spin-offs creation, including features or firm performance.

This study is the first to empirically explore the university spin-offs creation phenomenon in the Latin American region. Hence, it contributes to university entrepreneurship literature, specifically to better understand this phenomenon from a more holistic perspective across different levels of analysis at the same time that it incorporates previous proposals to explain entrepreneurial orientation at universities.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the minimum conditions for the formation of an ecosystem that favours the emergence of spin-offs whose parent company is a family business.

Three family companies that have experienced processes supporting the creation of new companies led by family members were used for this exploration.

The findings show that it is possible to form an ecosystem with five basic components from which other factors of a different kind are derived, and that would favour the minimum conditions for new companies to emerge from the family business.

Spin-off companies have received valuable recognition in recent years. The vast majority of research on spin-offs considers those arising under the protection of a private innovation centre, a corporation, or university. This research gives more breadth to this coverage, by studying the emergence of spin-offs that rely on the family business as the parent company.

Esta investigación tiene el objetivo de identificar las condiciones mínimas para la conformación de un ecosistema que favorezca el surgimiento de empresas Spin-Off a partir de la empresa familiar como empresa madre.

Para esta exploración se tomaron tres empresas familiares que han experimentado procesos de apoyo a la creación de nuevas empresas lideradas por los miembros de la familia.

Los hallazgos muestran que es posible conformar un ecosistema con cinco componentes fundamentales a partir de los cuales se desprenden otros factores de diferente índole que propiciarían las condiciones mínimas para que emerjan nuevas empresas a partir de la empresa familiar.

Las empresas Spin-Off han tomado un valioso reconocimiento en los últimos años. La gran mayoría de investigaciones sobre empresas spin-off se ocupan de aquellas que surgen bajo el amparo de un centro de innovación privado, una corporación o una universidad. Esta investigación da más amplitud a esta cobertura, al estudiar el surgimiento de spin-off que se apoyan en la empresa familiar como empresa madre.

The recent failure to deliver the Lisbon agenda has led to much soul-searching within Europe (cf. The Sapir Group, 2005). This failure has enlarged the gulf between the limited number of successful knowledge regions, and those regions for whom globalisation has brought further anxiety, job losses and economic restructuring. More recent Lisbon-inspired policies have therefore attempted to build linkages between successful ‘knowledge islands’ and other, outlying and peripheral places, so that all these areas can benefit from concentrations of European knowledge and innovativeness.