Akademicki spin off. Wiedza, zasoby i ścieżki rozwoju

Akademickie spin offy to przedsiębiorstwa tworzone przez byłych lub obecnych pracowników instytucji naukowych i wykorzystujące elementy wiedzy naukowej do budowy swojej oferty rynkowej. Stanowią ważny składnik nowoczesnej gospodarki, tworząc jeden z kanałów transferu wiedzy naukowej do praktyki. W publikacji zaprezentowano akademickie spin offy przez pryzmat intensywności wykorzystywania wiedzy naukowej i biznesowej, analizując konfigurację ich zasobów oraz strukturę oferty rynkowej. Dzięki wywiadom przeprowadzonym przez autora z właścicielami akademickich spin offów możliwe było przedstawienie tej zbiorowości w sposób realistyczny i odzwierciedlający różnorodność jej zachowań. W monografii zaproponowano kategoryzację akademickich spin offów, dokonano szczegółowego opisu i analizy każdej z kategorii oraz przedstawiono typowe ścieżki rozwojowe. Uzyskany obraz akademickich spin offów jest daleki od wizerunku szybko rozwijających się na skalę globalną firm wywodzących się z wiodących uczelni światowych. Ukazuje on jednak złożoność postaw przedsiębiorców i ich działań. Wskazuje na zachodzące procesy uczenia się oraz pozyskiwania wiedzy z zewnątrz, a także na powiązanie wykorzystania wiedzy z procesem przedsiębiorczym.

Academic spin-offs are seen as one of the visible effects of the process of commercialising scientific knowledge and enhancing the market offer with services and products based on scientific knowledge. Since the early 1990s, they have become the subject of interest of the world of science and the economic policy. The literature, however, often focuses on the most ambitious endeavours arising from key global universities. This leads to marginalisation in research analyses of a significant majority of this kind of undertakings which arise without formal links with universities or show no tendency for dynamic development. The establishment of academic spin-offs from the point of view of the scientific analysis of this phenomenon is characterised by a particularly interesting feature. It combines entrepreneurial activities related to the implementation of the entrepreneurial process with the use of scientific knowledge. Although the entrepreneurial process accompanies the founding of almost every new enterprise, the use of scientific knowledge during this process is relatively rare in the economy. Therefore, the entrepreneurial process specific for this group of companies constitutes a starting point for the key element of this monograph, i.e. the classification of academic spin-offs based on the intensity of the use of scientific knowledge and business knowledge as part of the business launching process. The main aim of the monograph is therefore the determination of the impact of scientific knowledge and business knowledge on the characteristics of a newly established academic spin-off company. The implementation of the main aim is related to the fulfilment of epistemological objectives which concern (i) systematisation of factors included in the academic spin-off definition, (ii) theoretical embedment of the components of the entrepreneurial process in the context of knowledge used in the process of establishing a new enterprise, and (iii) systematisation of the link between the entrepreneurial process and resources. Empirical objectives included (i) determination of the impact of scientific knowledge and business knowledge application on the configuration of academic spin-off resources, (ii) determination of the impact of scientific knowledge and business knowledge application on the structure of the market offer of an academic spin-off company, (iii) determination of the impact of scientific knowledge and business knowledge application on the development path of an academic spin-off immediately after the establishment of the company, and (iv) verification of the concept of categorisation of academic spin-offs based on diversity in the use of scientific and business knowledge. The approach to defining academic spin-offs adopted in the monograph captures a wide spectrum of the analysed phenomenon. The analysis encompassed new enterprises founded (co-founded) by persons involved in scientific work at a university or other scientific institution and at least partly based on the use of scientific knowledge related to this work. The adopted approach allows for the analysis of a wide range of this phenomenon but it also creates research challenges concerning the precise identification of companies that meet the definition criteria. This applies to the identification of components of scientific knowledge used in the establishment of academic spin-off companies as well as the identification of the enterprises whose founders worked in scientific units. Due to the exploratory-descriptive-explanatory goals of the study and the particular difficulties in identifying enterprises for analysis, qualitative research methods were adopted, including in-depth interviewing techniques. It allowed for a detailed analysis of individual cases in the context of founding processes and company development. In-depth interviews were conducted with company owners or co-owners at the companies’ headquarters personally by the author of the publication. The contents of individual interviews were (with the knowledge and consent of interlocutors) recorded on digital media, which enabled their repeated reproduction at the data analysis stage. A critical review of the literature was a starting point for the conducted empirical analysis. It provided the basis for presenting a cohesive theoretical concept combining the entrepreneurial process, including the application of scientific and business knowledge in its course, and its result in the form of resource configuration. Thus presented perspective of interdependence was a starting point to formulate the assumption concerning the possibility of classifying academic spin-offs. It assumes an empirical analysis of the features of entities characterised by a similar level of implementation of a given type of knowledge. The model was built in the form of a matrix that assumes two dimensions of knowledge utilisation in the framework of a given undertaking: (1) academic spin-offs with a high or low/moderate level of business knowledge use, (2) academic spin-offs with a high or low/moderate level of scientific knowledge use. The use of qualitative methodology in the conducted study determines the approach to the verification of formulated hypotheses. Thus, an approach taking into account qualitative characteristics of the obtained research material was used. The features of each type of surveyed enterprises were described in detail in the structure of the market offer and individual categories of resources. Comparisons (tabular) were made comprising the most important features of each of the analysed types of resources and market offer structures. The conducted analysis indicated that the applied criteria for academic spin-offs allowed us (1) to identify common characteristics of enterprises belonging to each type of undertakings, and (2) to identify differences in the configuration of resources used and the structure of the offer between individual categories of enterprises. Both of the above-presented elements provide the basis for inference regarding the existence of the influence of diversity in the intensity of scientific and business knowledge use on the behaviour of companies in the area of resource configuration and on the characteristics of their market offer. The above-presented conclusion is consistent with hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 formulated in the monograph introduction. The analysis of diversity of academic spin-offs was continued in relation to the characteristics of development paths followed immediately after the company was established. These paths show clear differences between companies of particular types. This is evident in relation to: • attitudes towards enterprise development, • the way of understanding enterprise development – which is mainly visible in the scope of particular categories of analysed resources, • the way of understanding the development of the market offer. The conclusion derived from the analysis of development paths of particular types of academic spin-off companies is that no “universal” paths, typical of each or most of the analysed types of companies exist. Development paths differ from one another, which shows that the criteria for differentiation of enterprises assumed in this monograph have a real impact on their behaviour. The diversity of resource configurations in particular types of companies as well as diversification of development paths are consistent with the assumptions about the impact of the available resource configuration on the course of the entrepreneurial process. Entrepreneurs in type 1, 2 and 3 companies usually repeat their previous behaviour, sometimes improving certain components of processes occurring within the company. Their behaviour shows a convergence with the perception of processes from the perspective of path dependence. The resources previously used as well as the knowledge already involved in the business venture can therefore be seen as a factor locking companies within a specific path. In this case, they are not a factor that is related to creating barriers to exit. They do not matter too much, as most of the surveyed companies are service companies with a relatively small scale of investment in physical resources (in particular, types 1 and 2) and young companies without a long history of business activity. At the same time, it seems that the configuration of resources and knowledge creates limitations (and perhaps even leads to the development of routine) in assessing the attractiveness of entrepreneurial projects possible to implement in the future. The essential characteristics of the monograph also encompass the inclusion of academic spin-offs which are based on tacit scientific knowledge in the research analysis. This was a major research challenge due to problems in the identification of the use of a specific type of tacit knowledge (i.e. scientific knowledge) in the process of launching a business. This was possible only due to the use of qualitative methodology based on interviews carried out personally by the author of the study. In a number of cases of using tacit knowledge, entrepreneurs did not think about the nature and origin of the applied knowledge. Thus, the research process required obtaining information referring to the nature of the market offer and methods of its implementation. It should be emphasised that such an approach coincides with the point of view of Pearson et al. (1993) and Agrawal (2006) indicating the importance of tacit knowledge acquired during the implementation of research projects, in particular as a result of failed experiments.