Academic Entrepreneurship

by Scott Shane

Published 1 January 2004
In this unique and timely volume, Scott Shane systematically explains the formation of university spinoff companies and their role in the commercialization of university technology and wealth creation in the United States and elsewhere. The importance of university spinoff activity is discussed and the historical development of university spinoff ventures is traced over time.

Scott Shane provides in-depth analysis of the four major factors that jointly influence spinoff activity: the university and societal environment, the technology developed at universities, the industries in which spinoffs operate, and the people involved. He documents the process of company creation, focusing on the formation of spinoffs, the transformation of the spinoff's technology into new products and services, the identification and exploitation of a market for these new products and services and the acquisition of financial resources. Also detailed are the factors that enhance and inhibit the performance of university spinoffs, as well as the effect that they have on the institutions that spawn them.

Authoritative and highly readable, this volume will appeal to scholars researching the spinoff phenomenon, university technology transfer officers, inventors, policymakers, external entrepreneurs and investors.

In the first exhaustive treatment of the field in 20 years, Scott Shane extends the analysis of entrepreneurship by offering an overarching conceptual framework that explains the different parts of the entrepreneurial process - the opportunities, the people who pursue them, the skills and strategies used to organize and exploit opportunities, and the environmental conditions favorable to them - in a coherent way.

Given the level of interest devoted to entrepreneurship in the economy and among academics at business schools, one would think that researchers would have deep insights into this phenomenon. However, those who look closely at academic investigations of entrepreneurship realize that scholarly understanding of this field is quite limited. Unlike its sister fields of accounting, marketing, finance, organizational behavior and strategic management, entrepreneurship is rather poorly explained by academics. Scott Shane resolves this by considering the nexus of enterprising individuals and valuable opportunities and by using that nexus to understand the processes of discovery and exploitation of opportunities, the acquisition of resources, entrepreneurial strategy and the organizing process.

This authoritative study will be a central reference and standard text for researchers, academics, and students in the field of entrepreneurship.