Factors Fostering Academics to Start up New Ventures: an Assessment of Italian Founders' Incentives

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Factors Fostering Academics to Start up New
Ventures an Assessment of Italian Founders'
Incentives

• Fini R., Grimaldi R., Sobrero M.
• University of Bologna, Italy

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Research focus

• Better understanding of the factors fostering
  academics to commercially exploit their knowledge
  through the creation of new companies

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Research objective

• Provide an integrative framework relating to
  factors fostering academics to found new
  companies
• To what extent are these factors perceived as
  relevant by academic founders in fostering the
  creation of new companies?

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Research background (1/2)

• a) Environmental influences
• Local context factors (Niosi and Bas, 2001 Beck
  et al., 2005 Feldman, 2001 Deeds et al., 1998)
• Government support mechanisms (Lerner, 1999)
• Industry and technology characteristics (Lowe,
  2002 Hsu and Bernstein, 1997).

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Research background (2/2)

• b) University level support mechanisms (Colyvas
  et al., 2002 Grandi and Grimaldi, 2005)
• c) Individual level related factors (Shane, 2004
  Zucker at al., 1998 Powers, 2003).

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An integrative framework
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Empirical analysis research design

• Academic spin-offs population 50, sample 47,
  response rate 94
• Academic founders population 150, sample 88,
  response rate 58
• Data gathering
• Structured questionnaire
• face-to-face interviews with academic founders

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Methods

• Three stage process
• Descriptive statistics for all of the
  factors/incentives fostering academics to create
  a new venture
• Respondents opinions were analyzed through a
  Principal Component Analysis (PCA).
• Analysis of the sources (if any) of inter
  individual differences in respondents
  perceptions of incentives ANOVA

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Empirical analysis Environmental influences
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Empirical analysis University level related
factors
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Empirical analysis Individual level related
factors
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Empirical analysis ANOVA

• Factors extracted through PCA vs. Universities of
  affiliation no major significant differences
  among academic responses
• Factors extracted through PCA vs. Academic
  status no major significant differences among
  academic responses

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Conclusions and implications

• Italian academics involvement in creating new
  ventures is not driven by entrepreneurial
  attitude, but rather by the expectation to
  generate outcomes for enhancing their academic
  position
• These companies show a pretty poor market
  orientation and strong link with their
  universities of origin
• Additional forms of investments/incentives made
  available by some universities are not perceived
  as providing additional support. Fine tuning of
  existing support mechanisms?

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• Discussion

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Descriptive statistics for academic spin offs
(1/2)
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Descriptive statistics for academic spin offs
(2/2)