No abstract

University spinoffs, Academic entrepreneurship, L31, M13, O31, O32,

In many universities, heads, administrators and faculty seek to increase the propensity to engage in commercialization of research activity through the spinoff of new companies. The highly complex mechanism of spinoff generation is typically considered the result of either the characteristics of individuals, organizational policies and structures, organizational culture, or the external environment. Explanations of spinoff activity have in the main focused on only one of these dimensions at a time. In this paper we integrate these four dimensions of academic entrepreneurship to develop a more systemic understanding of spinoff activity at the university level. Using the case of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a top spinoff generator in the United States, a systemic analysis is presented. We identify the inter‐related factors that have contributed to successful academic entrepreneurship in MIT. We argue that MIT's success is based on the science and engineering resource base at MIT; the quality of research faculty; supporting organizational mechanisms and policies such as MIT's Technology Licensing Office; and the culture within MIT faculty that encourages entrepreneurship. However, to understand why MIT has developed these resources and organizational mechanisms, it is necessary to understand the historical context and emergence of MIT, and in particular the historical mission of the university, the role of key individuals and university leaders in supporting this mission, and the impact of past success at commercialization activity. Finally, we suggest that MIT's success needs to be understood in the context of the local regional environment. We argue that university administrators and academics can learn from the case of MIT, but that efforts at transposing or replicating single elements of MIT's model may only have limited success, given the inter‐related nature of the drivers of spinoff activity.

To analyze university contribution to economic development, the present study examines universities' technology transfer policies and their associated economic development impact. The article examines how a university defines itself as part of a region as well as what activities, if any, do university commercialization strategies in context of their regional environment affect spin-off activity. Furthermore, this study explores the ways universities contribute to regional economic development by examining existing theories and analyzing universities' relationships with both government and industry in two regions. This study draws from Roberts and Malone's (1996) selectivity-support typology and highlights this article's argument by comparing the commercialization strategies of world-class universities strategies in the development of regional biotechnology clusters in Massachusetts and in Connecticut. This article investigates the notion of whether universities can differently influence the economic development processes of the while still having successful commercial outcomes. These findings build on previous research (Clarysse et al., 2005;Degroof and Roberts, 2004;Powers and McDougall, 2005), which argues that low support-low selectivity policies may be more suitable to entrepreneurially developed environments, whereas high support-high selectivity policies are more efficient in entrepreneurially underdeveloped environments. Masachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is located in a strong technopole region, whereby many of its support structures for spin-off formation are provided by the regional infrastructure of the Cambridge-Boston region. In contrast, Yale University, which has an underdeveloped entrepreneurial context, has had to take a more proactive role in providing incubation capabilities to their spin-off projects. This finding supports a contingent based perspective of academic entrepreneurship, whereby low support-low selectivity policies are more fitted to entrepreneurially developed environments, whereas high support-high selectivity policies are more efficient in entrepreneurially underdeveloped environments.

Since the publication of Birger Wernerfelt's seminal article on the `Resource-based view of the firm' in 1984, the strategic management field has embraced the notion that firms are fundamentally heterogeneous in terms of their resources and internal capabilities. This paper assesses the development of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm from Wernerfelt's own perspective. Given his limited engagement in the strategic management field over the previous decades, we asked Wernerfelt to revisit his work and to comment on the critical issues which have subsequently arisen as the RBV has developed into a dominant paradigm in strategic management.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract