Growth catalysts in successful academic spin offs: the case of Catalonia

Identificador:  TDX:2509

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2509

Autors:  Guspi Bori, Felipe

Resum:
Academic Entrepreneurship has historically had discrete results in Europe that limit the returns of the commercialization of research and its contribution to society. Most of the Academic Spin-Off’s in Europe do not show a growth path as expected and neither scholars nor practitioners have a complete explanation of it. Studies on Academic Spin-Offs (ASOs) growth after the earlier stages are scarce. Although Growth is a widely studied phenomenon in Entrepreneurship literature, current models and frameworks fail to explain a great amount of growth. The aim of the study is to uncover the attitudes, beliefs, decisions, actions and milestones that take these companies to grow during a sustained period of time after their earlier stages from the lens of the successful ASO entrepreneurs in Catalonia. We applied a mixed methods design, consisting in a sequential explanatory study: An initial quantitative study that produces the results that are the input for the qualitative study. Thus, first we performed this company selection of successful ASO trough a quantitative study on the Catalonian ASO to locate those companies whose balance-sheet data show a sustained high-growth between year 3 and year 6 after its inception. Second, we performed in-depth semi-structured interviews to the founders of these successful companies and a thematic analysis on the transcriptions of the interviews. We identified six growth catalysts: Top Management Team (TMT) formation and new incorporations, industry partnerships, a market-ready, cutting-edge technical product or service, a big financial support, and a strategic turnaround in the business model. We provided academics with a framework to explain the growth process and the causal effect the growth catalysts have on it. These growth catalysts have an influence in all stages of the growth process and combined with the company capabilities developed by the founder and the TMT, accelerate the growth process. Further contributions of the study relate to the determinant role of the team of researchers and previous industry research activities on growth, the importance of tacit technologies and key recommendations regarding performance measurement and University support policies.