Academic spin-off firms in Delft and Trondheim

Abstract

Academic spin-off firms tend to grow slowly which decreases the effectiveness of policies enhancing the knowledge based economy. The average growth of the 105 academic spin-off firms in this research is 1.2 fte per year, however the median is only 0.4 fte per year. In order to increase the speed at which academic spin-off firms grow, insight in what can go well and wrong needs to be obtained. This research is focussing on the match between incoming information about resources and resource deficiencies of academic spin-off firms, and the effect of this match on the firms growth. The match in this research will be defined as the response of the academic spin-off firms to resource deficiencies in terms of attracting external information about these resources. A good match would mean that the firms are acting pre-emptively, solving problems before they exist. The main research questions which this research answers is: "How well does the incoming information retrieved from the knowledge networks of the academic spin-off firms match with the resources they are lacking, and how does this match influence the growth". By using common sense the following hypothesis is proposed and later tested: "Firms which are better at matching the incoming information from their knowledge networks with their missing resources, and thus have a higher match, grow faster". This research question and hypothesis is analysed and tested by using a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach. The main part of this research is done quantitatively by using STATA®. After the quantitative results are known they are interpreted, and checked qualitatively through four in-depth interviews. These results combined generate the validated results. The dataset which is used to perform the quantitative part contains data about 105 academic spin-off firms in Delft and Trondheim. The trend which is found is that academic spin-off firms which are pre-emptively obtaining information about investment capital, or management skills grow faster than their counterparts which are reactive or passive. This conclusion also verifies the hypothesis and shows that firms which are better at matching the incoming information by acting pre-emptively do experience a faster growth. The recommendations which follow from these results are split into two categories: recommendations for the firms, and recommendations for the incubators. The recommendations for the academic spin-off firms are as follows. Try to be ahead of future resource deficiencies, and solve future resource deficiencies before they emerge. If your firm is experiencing a strong growth make sure that the management skills within the firm are developed to sustain such growth before the lack of management skills is holding the firm back. The recommendations for the incubators are based on the recommendations to the academic spin-off firms. In order to make sure the firms act pre-emptively they need to know when to attract information. The incubator should therefore create an early warning system based upon the actual stage of development of the academic spin-off firms. This stage of development should include the number of employees of the firm, the capital position of the firm, the maturity of the product the firm is selling, and the current resource deficiencies of the firm.