Academic founders and the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition process: an empirical analysis based on Italian academic spin-offs

none2The important role that academic spin-offs have in supporting economic and technological growth has been widely acknowledged (Shane, 2004). Academic spin-offs are companies created to exploit a technological knowledge originated within universities. Such a definition includes cases in which university dependents start a company on the basis of either a university-assigned technology (license) or a more generic technological knowledge (non university-assigned). It also encompasses situations in which the university elects to provide the rights to the technology to an external, independent entrepreneur, non-university dependent, who initiates a new company (Radosevich, 1995). Universities, which are aware of the important contribution that academic spin-offs can give to economic and technological development, have been increasingly supporting their creation and growth. Many studies have been devoted to understand factors spurring their creation and growth, and have addressed the mechanisms put in place by universities, ranging from business plan competitions, university incubators, technology transfer offices (Colombo and Del Mastro, 2002; Grimaldi and Grandi, 2001) the characteristics of the local contexts in which these companies are settled (Degroof and Roberts, 2004; Florida, 1999) and academic founders’ characteristics and those of the founding teams (Roberts, 1991; Grimaldi and Grandi 2003). Despite the growing interest around academic spin-offs, there is little evidence on the nature of academic entrepreneurs and their behavior in university technology transfer. More specifically the issue of opportunity identification is central to entrepreneurship (Wright et al., 2004). Knowledge (and information), cognitive and behavioral differences help explain why certain individuals recognize opportunities while others do not (Venkataraman, 1997). In this paper, we tackle this important issue for policy makers, university administrators and would-be entrepreneurs. The recognition of opportunities for commercially exploiting a given technological knowledge is the first step of a new venture creation process. The ability of academic founders to identify opportunities, in addition to being influenced by the local context in which they operate, by the entrepreneurial culture at their universities, by the availability of TTOs, also depends on their personal motivations, on their past experience, on their entrepreneurial cognition. The ability to connect specific knowledge and a commercial opportunity requires a set of skills, aptitudes and circumstances that are not evenly distributed (Venkataraman, 1997). In our study we address this issue, first through the analysis of the literature, by offering a review of previous studies that have analyzed the factors influencing new ventures’ founders ability to recognize opportunities. Then we present an empirical analysis based on a database of 45 Italian academic spin-offs, originated from five universities all in the region Emilia Romagna. Data have been gathered through a questionnaire which has been addressed to academic founders, in order to explore their motivations, their incentives, their previous experience and the factors that in their opinion have mostly influenced their ability to identify opportunities for commercial exploitation of their technologies. We gathered this information through face to face interviews with academic founders. We addressed the questionnaire to every academic founders, for an overall number of 95 completely filled in questionnaires. Academic founders provided self-reported data, based on their own experience and involvement in a new venture creation process. In additional to personal information, through the survey, academic founders also provide information about the support that they received from their university of origin and about the characteristics of the local context in which their companies are settled. Our empirical analy...noneFini R.; Grimaldi R.Fini R.; Grimaldi R