Research-based spin-offs targeting the market for technologies: a conceptual model

Abstract

This paper addresses the commercialisation decisions of research-based spin-off firms, focusing on the case of companies specialising in the production and sale of intellectual property - a model of entrepreneurial behaviour increasingly frequent in science-based fields, and that research-based spin-offs may be more prone to adopt given their specific characteristics. Combining insights from the economics of technological change and the strategic management of technology literature, we discuss the conditions that influence spin-offs ability to pursue with this strategy, and advance some theory-driven hypothesis regarding key factors that are likely to determine their choice - nature of knowledge, appropriability conditions, location and degree of control upon complementary assets and institutional setting of origin - and their impact upon firms’ decisions. We add to the still incipient research on this model of behaviour, as well as to recent research on the determinants of the commercialisation strategy of small technologyintensive firms.