Academic Entrepreneurship

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Academic Entrepreneurship
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Academic Entrepreneurship

• People with Academic degrees who found companies
• University spin-offs
• Phenomenon rare but survival of those that do
  start is high (68)
• Creating spin-offs is more profitable than
  Licensing to Established firms
• It all got started in the 1970s..about

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Silicon Valley and Route 128

• West and East coast
• Stanford MIT Sloan
• Technology Meccas
• Semiconductors, IT and Biotech
• Setback in the late 70s early 80s Silicon
  Valley recovered, but MIT only lately
• Role-models to therest of the world

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Innovation Systems

• A genuine belief that it was indeed possible to
  engineer a deficiency in entrepreneurship
• A clear favoring of opportunistic
  entrepreneurship over necessity entrepreneurship.
• Necessity entrepreneurship does not really
  exist
• Political and Social Issue
• Social Entrepreneurship

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Innovation Systems

• Case Finland

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Finland

• Population 5.2 million
• 69 urban
• 338.000 km2
• 10 water, 68 forest
• GDP, USD 128 billion

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Turku Region290,000 inhabitants 130,000 jobs
14,000 firms
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University of Finland

• 20 Universities
• 29 Polytechnic colleges
• 120,000 starting places
• Personnel 12,000
• 38 of the population has an academic degree

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Finnish Science Parks

• 22 technology and
• science parks
• 550 employees
• 100 M turnover
• 1 600 enterprises
• 32 000 experts
• 1 000 000 m2

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Mission of Science Parks

• ENHANCE INDUSTRIAL PROFILE
• BUILD THE IMAGE OF THE REGIONAL ECONOMY
• IMPORTANT ROLE IN INNOVATION AND INDUSTRIAL
  RENEVAL
• SUPPORT THE FORMATION OF BUSINESSES
• NURTURE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
• INTERMEDIATES BETWEEN ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY
• CATALYST FOR THE COMMERCIALISATION OF RESEARCH
  RESULTS
• TRANSFORMER OF IDEAS INTO NEW PRODUCTS AND
  PROCESSES

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Technology Profiles

• Information and communications
• Healthcare and medical
• Environmental
• Electronics , optoelectronics
• Bio, pharmaceuticals
• Digital media, content production
• Food
• Materials
• Energy
• Logistics
• Measurement
• Metal, machine and tool
• Automation, lifting and moving
• Chemical and plastic
• Laser, optics
• Forestry and wood
• Paper manufacturing
• Nano

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The Finnish Innovation System

• 1982 First Finnish science park
• 1985 Premises for enterprises
• near universities, incubators
• 1988gt Finnish Science Park
• Association TEKEL
• 1990 Commercialising research-based
• business ideas
• 1994 gt Centre of Expertise Programme
• 1995 gt Developing regional clusters,
• specialized services
• 2000 gt Internationalisation

• 1979 Founding of National technology committee
• 1982 Council of State resolution on
  technologypolicy
• 1983 Founding of Tekes
• 1984 Commencement of Technology programmes
• 1991 Finland becomes a member of CERN
• 1992 Founding of Finnish Secretariat for EU RD

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Tekes mission statement

• Tekes primary objective is to promote the
  competitiveness of Finnish industry and the
  service sector by technological means.
• Activities aim to diversify production
  structures, increase production and exports, and
  create a foundation for employment and societal
  wellbeing.

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Turku Science Park

• three universities
• four polytechnics
• university hospital
• 13 500 employees
• 25 000 students
• 400 professors
• 300 companies and organizations
• over 210 000 m2 of premises

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The Incubator

• Their story
• nearly 150 startups
• 1989-2005
• success rate 85-90
• nearly 800 new jobs
• at the moment about 30 ventures in the
• incubators

• My questions
• 16 yrs
• 9 firms/yr
• 50 new jobs/yrs
• Only 0.5 want to start growth companies gt
  minimum 200 firms to get 1 growth company
• Is this the economic engine?

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Assuming Innovation Entrepreneurship

• Is it a recipe for opting out?
• Most entrepreneurs are replicators
• Innovative entrepreneurship (high expectation
  entrepreneurship Autio, 2005) has a high 1.6
  prevalence and a low 0.5 prevalence
• What about the other 98.4 - 99.5?
• This fraction stands for most new jobs created
  and economic wealth creation
• Technology entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneruship innovation (Schumpeter)

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National/Regional Innovation Systems (NIS/RIS)

• Policy makers attempts to increase
• Economic growth
• Entrepreneurship
• Employment, and
• Taxable income
• Innovative firms a.k.a high technology companies
• Assumed to create high salary employment
• Modern version of smoke-stack industry
• Most firm start small and never grow 3 manage
  to grow beyond 100 persons
• Large body of previous research - growing

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The ideal Triple Helix
Govern-ment
Govern- ment
Univer-sity
Univer-sity
Indus-try
Indus-try
b. A laissez-faire model
University
a. An etatistic model
Govern- ment
Industry
c.Triple Helix
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The study

• The aim
• Seek a common understanding of what an innovation
  system is and what it should be
• Identify potential weaknesses
• Identify potential overlap between the
  organizations, and
• Identify what measures need to be taken in order
  to increase venture development and emergence of
  growth companies

• 50 in-depth interviews 1.5 hours taped and
  transcribed
• Representatives of govt agencies (science park,
  regional development centres, area development
  centres, national technology agency
• Universities and polytechnic colleges
  (researchers, rectors, deans, administrative
  support personnel)
• Entrepreneurs operating within the science park

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The study

• Survey among research and teaching personnel in
  three universities and one polytechnic college
  response rate 23,5 N326

• Here we report on
• 10 interviews from one out of the three
  universities researchers and administrative
  personnel
• 8 entrepreneurs

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Results

• What is an innovation system?
• Is there any other system than the US model a
  capital and knowledge intensive environment that
  generates knowledge intensive growth companies
• I dont know!

• What do you do if you have an idea?
• You go behind the corner and wait til it blows
  over, and then you back to research!
• We have tried to stay away as much as possible
  from their meetings and we want it to be that way

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Innovation system as seen by entrepreneurs and
researchers
a. An etatistic model
b. A laissez-faire model
! The entrepreneur
! Sources of Innovation
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Parallel universes the entrepreneurs view
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Conclusions

• The researcher is passionate about research
• Involvement in entrepreneurship is time away from
  important research
• Does not know who the relevant government bodies
  are
• Does not see itself as part of the science park
• The link (important) to business is through
  Industry collaboration contract research
  business innovation system
• Government A real bureaucratic monster!

• The entrepreneur is part of an innovative
  business system not a government run national
  innovation system
• Does not think a science park can provide any
  relevant support
• A hotel with broadband
• Needs university collaboration to perform basic
  research
• Problematic
• Different worlds

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Conclusions

• We are quite far from the ideal Triple Helix
• The entrepreneur is excluded
• The innovators is excluded
• A RIS or a NIS appears to assume that ideas and
  potential entrepreneurs will line up if the
  system is in place!

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What do we know about university/business
collaboration

• Sometimes it leads to spun out business
• But those conducting research in close proximity
  to business become better scientists and if they
  start businesses become more likley to succeed
• What do you know about the Bayh-Dole Act 1980?

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Made it significantly much easier to
commercialize or license federally funded
innovations