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Universities show an increasing commitment to stimulate science- and technology-based entrepreneurship with the aim of contributing to societal and economic development. The provision of science and technology entrepreneurship education (STEE) and the operation of technology transfer offices (TTOs) share the objective of improving university capabilities and output in science-based entrepreneurship. The literature has addressed STEE initiatives and TTOs separately. This paper reports the first comprehensive study of TTO involvement in STEE. From a sample of 176 university TTOs across 28 European countries, we found that 71 percent of TTOs were involved in the provision of STEE. The extensive involvement in STEE indicates that TTOs play an active role in stimulating universities’ entrepreneurial capabilities beyond specific licensing and spin-off cases. We analyze how the characteristics of TTOs and universities potentially influence the scope of STEE involvement in terms of breadth of contents, target audiences and duration. We find that older, strategically autonomous TTOs that are located in universities attributing strong relevance to technology transfer activities are particularly active in STEE. The active role of TTOs in STEE has implications for understanding the entrepreneurship education ecosystem of universities and offers interesting opportunities for further research.

Despite the wealth of academic studies that analyze different policy measures and initiatives implemented by national or regional governments to support knowledge transfer from academia to industry, scant systematization efforts seek to integrate these disparate lines of research. The systematic review of academic studies on public policy measures in support of technology transfer presented by this article suggests a literature classification based on two dimensions: the type of policy measure analyzed, and the focus of the study (i.e., policy design vs. impact assessment). On the basis of this comprehensive review, we summarize the lessons learned thus far, identify research gaps that continue to limit insights into public policy measures for technology transfer, and highlight directions for further research.

University–industry technology transfer (TT) has become increasingly institutionalized and is supported by numerous reforms and initiatives at the national, regional and university levels. Most countries have implemented a policy mix involving a range of instruments to support the commercialization of research. Still, there is no systematic evidence indicating why the mix of policy instruments differs between countries. This study offers a novel cross-national investigation of the policy mix emphasizing the level of centralization and decentralization of policy instruments. We map and analyze two specific types of public instruments aimed at addressing the so-called funding gap in TT: proof of concept programs (POCs) and university-oriented seed funds (USFs). Based on a survey across 21 European countries, we find that such instruments are widely used but are organized differently depending on the level of implementation of TT practices in the country and the specific type of instrument considered. More precisely, we find a U-shaped relationship between the use of centralized gap-funding instruments and the country’s implementation of TT practices. Moreover, the type of gap-funding instrument (POC or USF) moderates this relationship. We discuss the implications of our findings and suggest that the policy mix of gap-funding instruments evolve with the maturity of the national TT infrastructure.

A growing stream of the academic literature has investigated the factors that hamper the participation of women researchers in patenting and commercialization activities; however, limited research has examined the policies that address these forms of the gender gap. In this paper, we explore whether the ownership arrangements of university patents and the presence of university-level support measures such as technology transfer offices and linkages with science and technology parks are positively associated with women’s involvement in academic patenting. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 2538 academic patents by Italian inventors in the period 1996–2007. The results of our analyses highlight a positive role of university policies in addressing the gender gap in technology transfer activities.

This work investigates the role of university and PRO-oriented seed funds (USFs)—VC funds with an explicit mission to make investments in academic spin-offs and support technology transfer—as instruments for addressing funding gaps and facilitating the commercialization of academic technologies. We first offer an overview of USFs in Europe, highlighting their heterogeneity and principal characteristics. Second, we exploit a unique data set of 1,497 start-ups (including 733 USF-backed start-ups and another 764 start-ups backed by other VC funds) to analyze how USF-backed companies perform in terms of exit rates, staging, and syndication levels when compared with non-USF-backed companies. Empirical evidence suggests that USF-backed companies perform better in staging and syndication but worse in exit rates. Moreover, our analyses show that, within the group of USF-backed companies, the ones that can attract more follow-on funding and investors are those financed by USFs that are internally managed by a universities/PROs and are linked to universities with high scientific rankings.

This paper analyzes the importance given by Venture Capital firms (VCs) to the patent portfolios of start-up companies in their financing decisions. In particular, the contributions presented are twofold. First, we determine whether the amount of VC financing is associated with three elements related to technological portfolios: number of patent, patent scope and number of “core technology” patents (i.e., those patents related to core technological capabilities of the company). Second, we examine whether the relevance of patents for the financing decisions varies across different types of VC firms, depending on their industry specialization and affiliation. We provide empirical evidence from a sample of 332 VC-backed companies in the nanotechnology sector for the period 1985–2006. Our results confirm the importance of core technology patents in the VC investment decisions, especially for specialized VCs, when compared with generalist VCs. However, no differences are found between corporate and independent VCs.

The paper tests different theories of how diversification by Venture Capital (VC) firms affects fund performance. The Financial Intermediation and the Resource-based Theory suggest that lower financial risk associated with diversification implies a lower return. However, the assumptions of these theories are questionable in the context of venture capital. We test their validity using data on VC portfolio diversification by industry and country using an original dataset of 649 VC funds originating in the United Kingdom over the period 1981–2000. Results show that higher diversification by industry does indeed lower VC fund success rates. Diversification by geographical region, on the contrary, increases returns.

Privatisation has been one of the defining economic developments of the last two decades in several manufacturing and service industries in both industrialised and developing countries. This paper reviews a number of theoretical and empirical studies linking privatisation processes to innovation activities at the firm level. First, it refers to the literature on corporate governance structures and innovation in order to analyse the theoretical relationship between changes in the principal-agent structure of firms following privatisation, incentives to invest in R&D and R&D performance. It then reviews a number of empirical studies that have analysed this issue in the context of Western Europe.

The limited availability of private funding sources to support technology transfer activities represents a major barrier to the effective commercialization of university technologies. This working paper analyzes the key determinants of use of financial instruments by universities - such as seed funds and proof-of-concept programs - to address such funding gaps. Using data from a survey of technology transfer office managers in European universities, the authors detail the antecedents of the presence of such instruments at the university level and their perceived effectiveness. The findings in turn have notable policy implications.

Despite the diffusion of communication tools and boundary spanning technologies, knowledge flows in innovation processes retain a distinct localized nature in many industries and geographical clusters emerge as critical areas to foster technological diffusion. In this paper we focus on the role of focal firms in industrial clusters as \"gatekeepers\" introducing external technological novelties in the cluster and enacting new useful knowledge production locally, thus enhancing international competitive capabilities of all firms in the cluster. We analyze a longitudinal dataset of 720 patents 1 Corresponding Author www.druid.dk granted by USPTO between 1990 and 2003 to firms in the automatic packaging machinery industrial district of Emilia-Romagna in Northern Italy, and a matched-sample to control for the uneven geographical distribution of R&D and patenting activities. Our results show that firms within the cluster use local knowledge to a greater extent and more rapidly than knowledge from the outside than it would be expected given the geographic distribution of innovative activity in the industry. Moreover, focal firms use external knowledge to a greater extent than other firms operating in the cluster, and other (non focal) firms within the cluster use knowledge from focal firms to a greater extent than would be expected given the geographic distribution of innovative activity in the industry. Implications for research on the geographical distribution of innovation activities are discussed.