Small World, Big Ideas, and Smart Companies - A Qualitative Study of Academic Spin-off Companies and Knowledge Creation.

Abstract

This dissertation is about spin-off companies that stem from academic research activities from within universities. The focus is on the ways in which these companies create knowledge, the ways in which knowledge flows both within and outside of the company, and generally, the ways in which knowledge can evolve from an abstract scientific concept into an application that benefits society. The development of a more nuanced understanding of organizational knowledge and organizational knowledge creation in an academic-industrially situated context is an important aim of this dissertation.

The growing trends of academic research commercialization motivated this study. Universities are seen as agents of economic growth whose students, faculty, and researchers generate both incremental and breakthrough innovations through the knowledge they create. Some of this innovative output demonstrates commercial potential, which can underlie the organization of a new business venture whose aim is to further develop a proof-of-concept and a marketable product solution for the benefit of the greater good. Academic spin-off companies are business ventures and a category of social organizational architecture. They assemble both university-based and non-university-based intellectual and capital resources for the purposes of developing an academic research outcome into a practical product or solution. Various factors influence the organization of academic spin-off companies. Institutional factors such as the establishment of commercial and academic legitimacy influence the transparency of such companies, while epistemological factors such as diversity of knowledge resources influence their network structure and connectedness.

A qualitative case study of six Australian academic spin-off companies with international reach and connected to a common research university is the basis of this dissertation study. Each company is either a life science firm, a medical technology firm, or a firm with activities in these complementary industries. This dissertation adheres to the tenets of inductive theory building and seeks to contribute new middle range theoretical propositions and directions for future research to the growing body of scholarship on academic research commercialization and higher education. This dissertation draws from an interdisciplinary body of scholarship that includes organizations and knowledge, sociology and networks, entrepreneurship and new business development, and higher education policy.