Entrepreneurial Origin, Technological Knowledge and the Growth of Spin-off Companies

Bart Clarysse, Mike Wright and E. Vandevelde
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E. Vandevelde: -

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: We contribute to the literature on corporate spin-offs and university spin-offs by exploring how different characteristics in the technological knowledge base at start-up influence spin-off performance. We investigate how the technological knowledge characteristics endowed at start-up predict growth, taking into account whether the knowledge / technology is transferred from a corporation or university. We use a novel, hand-collected dataset involving 48 corporate and 73 university spin-offs, comprising the population of spin-offs in Flanders during 1991-2002. We find corporate spin-offs grow most if they start with a specific narrow-focused technology sufficiently distinct from the technical knowledge base of the parent company and which is tacit. University spin-offs benefit from a broad technology which is transferred to the spin-off. Novelty of the technical knowledge does not play a role in corporate spin-offs, but has a negative impact in university spin-offs unless universities have an experienced technology transfer office to support the spin-off.

Keywords: technological knowledge; corporate spin-offs; university spin-off (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-edu, nep-ent, nep-knm and nep-sbm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: Entrepreneurial Origin, Technological Knowledge, and the Growth of Spin‐Off Companies (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:10/693

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