Volume 10, Issue 2 - Special Issue: University Based Venture Development Organizations (VDOs), Guest Editors: Romi Kher and Thomas Lyons

The papers in this special issue explore the rapid growth of venture development organizations globally. A consistent theme that runs throughout the contributions is that, while ecosystem development is necessary everywhere to enhance the economic impact of entrepreneurship, in emerging economies, contextualization is critical. Countries have idiosyncratic histories and development trajectories. Myriad stakeholders participate and shape local ecosystems. To illustrate, this introduction provides an overview of some key venture development initiatives in South Africa, and we consider how venture development organizations, particularly those based at academic institutions, could contribute to the development of the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. We provide suggestions for policy initiatives and academic research.

Research on university-based venture development organizations is important to better understand how universities can provide an environment promoting entrepreneurial activity. However, there is a new infrastructure potentially of great relevance to the entrepreneurial eco-system of universities: makerspaces. Makerspaces provide important support and resources that are known to promote learning, innovation and venturing activity. I highlight the characteristics and effects of makerspaces and point towards potential areas for future research. In concluding, it appears that makerspaces can be a valuable part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in university-based venture development organizations.

Although there has been increasing recent interest in universities as ecosystems for the encouragement of academic entrepreneurship, almost none of that work has dealt with the specific personal motives that might lead academic scientists to start companies. Metaphorically, there has been a substantial body of work describing how to create a better racetrack, some study of what sort of horses best perform in the track, but essentially no examination of the jockeys. We address this gap in the literature in two ways – first by “importing” a variety of psychological characteristics that have been shown to be predictive in the larger entrepreneurship literature, and second by developing a series of context-specific motives. Our study of 50 biomedical scientists in an academic medical center showed, unsurprisingly, that patents matter. More importantly, although the results for the imported psychological characteristics were disappointing, the findings for context-specific motives suggest that founders are distinguished from non-founders primarily by their interest in doing something positive for humanity.

Business acceleration services are gaining popularity around the world. In this study, we put forward a framework and an iterative process for the design of acceleration programs. Based on literature from around the world and a case study of an acceleration program in Egypt, we develop a model that considers the process for designing, monitoring, and adjusting an acceleration program based on both internal and external considerations. In this study, we find that aspects such as the analysis of the external environment in the surrounding entrepreneurship ecosystem, and of the internal environment in the host institution’s capabilities, resources, and limitations, are important in guiding the design process. We also illustrate a comprehensive set of design parameters to be considered in the development of the acceleration program, including the program’s value proposition, sector focus, duration, service offering, resource intensity, partnerships, as well as the profile of the startups supported. In presenting this model, we aim to fill an important gap in research on how accelerators are designed and offer a framework substantiated by academic review that helps practitioners and policymakers avoid “copying and pasting” acceleration programs without careful attention to the local contexts and needs.

Theoretical concepts related to entrepreneurial ecosystems are currently in the initial stages of development and components of university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems (U-BEEs) are yet to be clarified or defined. This study identifies elements of U-BEEs and employs an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to analyze university-based venture development organizations (VDOs) as research subjects. This study extracted six elements: namely policy, finance, culture, support, human capital, and market, comprising 31 evaluation indicators. The results of this study indicated that “market” was considered the most crucial of the six elements in Taiwan. Finally, this paper provides theoretical and practical implications based on the aforementioned findings.

The importance of entrepreneurial ecosystems is accentuated in the academic entrepreneurship context since academic spinoffs (ASOs) must rely on actors from the ecosystem to access resources they lack in order to improve their performance. This study analyzes the impact that actors from social and institutional (university and nonuniversity) contexts in the entrepreneurial ecosystem have on ASO performance in the stage of creation and initial development and in the stage of consolidation. From a sample of 118 ASOs in the initial stage and 47 ASOs in the consolidation stage, the results indicate that social and institutional contexts improve the performance of ASOs in both phases of development, although the relevance of each context varies with the stage. In the creation and initial development stage, the institutional context affects the ASOs’ performance to a greater extent, while the influence of the social context is less strong. Science parks from the institutional context are the most relevant actors in this phase. In the consolidation phase, social context is the most relevant for improving the performance of ASOs, with the venture capitalist being the actor that exerts more influence. With respect to the institutional context, performance is only affected by the nonuniversity context in this stage.