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Economic Performance of Portuguese Academic Spin-Offs: Does the Human Capital of Founders Matter?

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Entrepreneurship, Human Capital, and Regional Development

Part of the book series: International Studies in Entrepreneurship ((ISEN,volume 31))

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Abstract

Most existing literature on spin-offs deals with factors affecting the emergence of these firms and not so much with what influences their economic outcomes. Moreover, the role of human capital as a potential booster of economic performance in spin-offs has been neglected or analyzed rather superficially. This chapter aims at assessing the role that human capital plays on the performance of Portuguese spin-offs in its different forms, including the entrepreneurs’ level and type of education, skills, experience, and network capabilities. Using a sample of 90 founders of 61 Academic Spin-Offs (ASOs) located in Portugal, associated with the University Technology Enterprise Network (UTEN), it was found that among human capital dimensions, business expertise, most notably market knowledge, was the one that affected economic performance the most in ASOs. Both the level and type of formal education of the founders failed to significantly influence the economic performance of ASOs. The unemployment status of the founders (prior to creating the ASOs), formal contacts with university, as well as the undertaking of R&D activities and internationalization emerged as critical positive determinants of economic performance in ASOs. Although some evidence exists on the relevance of university research excellence for the performance of ASOs, a univocal result emerged regarding the university context: ASOs that exclusively resort to the services of Science Parks, Incubators, and TTOs outperformed the others.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    UTEN is a network of professional Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) focused on the commercialization and internationalization of Portuguese Science and Technology.

  2. 2.

    Age and size of the firms are typically included as important determinants of firm performance. This work does not include such variables as ASOs are mainly very small and young firms. Instead, the size of the founding team was included, as well as information on whether the firm exports or not, which might be considered “instrumental” variables of size and age, respectively.

  3. 3.

    It is considered a formal contact if the founder has at least two contacts per year, including contracts and projects between organizations and the firm. Conversely, informal contacts occur when the founder has at least two contacts per year with the organization, including personal relationships and/or established through common interests, with a more social character.

  4. 4.

    Almost all surveyed ASOs stated that they have received some kind of support, exclusively or combined.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Economia, CEF.UP, Universidade do Porto, INESC TEC, OBEGEF, Porto, Portugal

    Aurora A. C. Teixeira

  2. Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Ricardo Castro

Authors
  1. Aurora A. C. Teixeira
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  2. Ricardo Castro
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aurora A. C. Teixeira .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Entrepreneurship, CEG-IST, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and Brunel Business School, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, United Kingdom

    Rui Baptista

  2. Department of Management and Economics, School of Social and Human Sciences and The Centre for Management Studies of Instituto Superior Técnico (CEG-IST), University of Beira Interior and University of Lisbon, Covilhã, Portugal

    João Leitão

Appendix

Appendix

Table 7.2 Distribution of the population of ASOs by TTO and University (reference year: 2013)
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Table 7.3 Hypothesis and proxies for the independent variables
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Table 7.4 Descriptive statistics for the dependent variable and entrepreneurs’ related factors
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Teixeira, A.A.C., Castro, R. (2015). Economic Performance of Portuguese Academic Spin-Offs: Does the Human Capital of Founders Matter?. In: Baptista, R., Leitão, J. (eds) Entrepreneurship, Human Capital, and Regional Development. International Studies in Entrepreneurship, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12871-9_7

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