Which Knowledge Becomes a Spin‐Off? An Exploratory Survey on Italian Context

The spin‐offs are the result of third academic revolution and the primary means of research exploitation becoming the primary mechanism for knowledge transfer from Universities and other Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to firms. Nowadays the University plays a central role in the process of innovation and supporting the industrial system. On this basis, the paper aims to analyze which knowledge can create spin‐off. In particular, the explanatory work after the analysis of the current state of the spin‐off in Italy and their main features, it proposes to highlight the relationships between universities’ knowledge and knowledge used in the spin‐off. The methodology used for this study is ideally divided into three parts. In the first step, an analysis was made on the literature of knowledge transfer and spin‐offs. In the second step, through an empirical analysis that took in consideration no. 1,384 spin‐offs, was highlighted the main critical features of the spin‐off in Italian Universities and other Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In the third step, the analysis has pointed out the policies of knowledge transfer that the Italian Universities and HEIs adopted for the creation of spin‐offs and the principal results obtained. The main element of originality of this work is to provide one in‐depth study of the mechanisms of knowledge transfer from Italian Universities to the context, with particular focus on spin‐off way. In particular, the study takes into account all the spin‐offs recognized by Italian Universities and compares them with policies of new enterprises’ creation. The paper wants to offer the first considerations on the characteristics of the spin‐off in Italy, highlighting the relationship between knowledge and spin‐offs and what type of knowledge was useful to create spin‐offs. The study is to be inserted in the field of research related to the analysis of institutional factors of knowledge transfer and their impact on the relationship between Universities and Industry, by trying to offer the first results and first insights of knowledge transfer policies used by Italian Universities.