The fast response of academic spinoffs to unexpected societal and economic challenges. Lessons from the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis

Abstract

The rapid emergence of the COVID‐19 crisis has challenged both private and public firms, requiring them to reshape their internal processes and external linkages in the fight against the virus, but also to survive the disrupting economic impact of the pandemic on their activities. Academic spinoffs have not been exempted from these dynamics. In this paper, we present and discuss a case study of an academic spinoff, Omnidermal, which has developed a new, efficient and easy‐to‐realize emergency life support machine for use in intensive and sub‐intensive care units. This case, apart from offering information on the best practices of how spinoffs may contribute socially to the fight against COVID‐19 and – more in general – against other exogenous shocks, also provides insights on their stages of development, evolution patterns and ability to define new solutions. The case shows that when the market needs are clear to a firm (as in the case of medical devices during the COVID‐19 crisis), the ‘legacy competences and practices’ of spinoffs (i.e., technical competences and work practices) can be fully exploited to compress the development time and to realize products demanded by the market. We also identify access to a network as being an essential boundary condition for this process. These results introduce an alternative scope for academic spinoffs. Given the ‘legacy competences and practices’ they are able to develop, they are ideal candidates to respond to the societal and economic challenges posed by a crisis over short periods of time. On the basis of these insights, we draw a series of implications for practitioners, policy makers and academics.

Surviving the coronavirus pandemic and beyond: Unlocking family firms’ innovation potential across crises

“…However, given that radical innovation in products, services, or even business models might be especially necessary during major crises—such as the recent and ongoing coronavirus pandemic ( Battaglia, Paolucci, & Ughetto, 2020 ; Breier et al, 2021 ; Kraus et al, 2020 )—we must understand more about family firms’ abilities to engage in risk-taking and radical innovation behavior during crises – and outside of crises to complement the picture. Indeed, Hu and Hughes (2020, p. 1227 ) have called for more research on “how radical innovation activities may enable the family firm to survive dramatic external environmental changes.” Second, while research on family firms’ innovation have opened up an exciting new area of inquiry, scholars have also lamented the literature’s limited understanding of innovation’s role in a firm’s long-term evolution ( Carney, Zhao, & Zhu, 2019 ; Eddleston, Kellermanns, & Collier, 2019 ; Farjoun, 2010 ; Rondi, De Massis, & Kotlar, 2019 ; Sun, Lee, & Phan, 2019 ).…”

R&D management at a time of crisis: what are we learning from the initial response to the COVID‐19 pandemic?

“…This shift towards a 'purposeled' logic (Ferrigno and Cucino, 2021) was universal across the sample, in both large (e.g. Bergami et al, 2021;von Behr et al, 2021) and small (Battaglia et al, 2021;Clauss et al, 2021) companies. Even very large 'arch-competitor' companies such as Apple and Google joined forces in the name of a societal value logic: developing the standard for bluetooth technology that enabled contact tracing across the world (Marhold, 2021).…”

“…Furthermore, companies participated in different initiatives to share their knowledge and pledged to license IP for free to those who were going to use them to fight the pandemic (Antonelli et al, 2021). In smaller companies, such as academic spin offs, the need to fulfil a societal need generated by the pandemic became a value to pursue, the catalyst to identify a market where to direct technological capabilities (Battaglia et al, 2021). Also, the societal value imposed from governments acted as a stimulus for entrepreneurial behaviour (Crupi et al, 2021), not only addressing COVID-era needs but also generating economic value within their regions.…”

Entrepreneurial activity of the IT sector in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-quarantine period

“…-Loss of the domestic sales market. Decreasing incomes of the population during the quarantine period will reduce the domestic market (Battaglia et. al (2021)).…”