University Management Practices and Academic Spin-offs

Building upon the recent literature on the empirical economics of management, we posit that different forms of management practices introduced by Universities to support academic entrepreneurship affect how well spin-offs get created, supported and evaluated and, eventually, account for academic spinoff performance. We draw on a longitudinal sample of 790 Italian University spin-offs founded by 42 different Italian Universities and observed over the period 2006-2014. Our results suggest that management practices contribute to explain the growth of academic spin-offs and that this effect varies across management practices (e.g. support operations management vs. target management) and spin-offs’ growth patterns (e.g. high-growth vs. low-growth spin-offs). Drawing on these results, the adoption of management practices by University managers should be carefully considered as they seem to serve different purposes. Their appropriateness can vary and, not surprisingly, some management practices seem to be more effective than others in driving spin-offs’ growth.