Academic Spin-Offs: The Role of Routinized Behaviours in New Venture Success

ISBN-13: 9783031222832 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Ziad El-Awad

Opis

 This book discusses the importance of developing routininized behaviours in new venture development, specifically highlighting the unique challenges that academic spin-offs face in this vital step towards successful business creation. During the early development stage, new ventures are informally established and have few routines that inform organizational performance. However, the process of new venture development is characterized by high ambiguity, for example entrepreneurs have to deal with ill-defined technologies that are only vaguely understood or delineated. They also need to gradually make sense of the connections between technological functions, customer preferences and market structures.  At the same time, during the early stage of new start-ups, experiences tend to be personal, embodied in specific individuals, such as the founder of founding team. Benefiting from these experiences and developing successful businesses that can exist independently of these individuals requires that these experiences become embedded in the form of routines.  The author argues that developing these routines, or ‘routinizing behaviours,’ plays a critical role in the process of adaptation, learning, and ultimately, success.Focusing on these routinizing behaviours in particular, the book presents primary and empirical research on the specific challenges that academic spin-offs face and delivers a framework for the routinization of behaviours, demonstrating the challenges and opportunities that can intervene in this process.  Finally, the author brings together implications that academics and practitioners can take and apply in their own ventures.

Spis treści

Chapter one: Academic spin-offs and their role in society

Academic spinoffs: what, why and how?

“What,” ASOs are defined and explained providing the reader with different perspectives on what type of ventures are ASOs considered to be and what are their main characteristics.

“Why,” Under this sub-heading, ASOs are discussed with respect to their relevance to society and economic development and growth. Moreover, emphasis is put on the link they create between universities and the industry and the innovation they introduce through technological development and patents.

“How,” we discuss how are ASOs created and funded and what are the main stages of the entrepreneurial process they take.

Meeting the challenge

There is a general agreement among practitioners and scholars alike that ASOs face unique challenges that are specific and stem from their characteristics. This sub-heading discusses these challenges and their implications on the development and survival of these ventures. Both internal and external challenges are discussed.

Chapter two: Routinizing behaviors in academic spin-offs

Routinizing behaviors and their relevance to ASOs

In this section, we present the concept of routinizing behaviors and its significance to ASOs. We discuss why routinizing behaviors is different in the context of new ventures from that in established firms. We argue for why this process is critical for the development and survival of ASOs.

What are organizational routines?

In this section, we provide a discussion around organizational routines and their origins and different forms. We discuss the micro-foundations of routines and their impact on organizational phenomenon including innovation and change.

How are organizational routines developed?

We develop an understanding of how routines are created and what triggers their development. We discuss the different forms of routine development, namely external and internal. Then, the section moves into discussing routine development as a learning process that occurs on multiple levels in the organization. This conceptualization illuminates how routines initially develop through entrepreneurs learning and disseminating their learning to the team and the venture level respectively. Hence, we conceptualise routine development as a process of learning that transcends individuals and ascends the venture.

Chapter three: Routinizing behaviors as a multilevel learning process

The role of multilevel learning in the development of organizational routines

Here we present research on learning in new ventures, detailing different levels of learning that contribute to the development of routines. We start with individual-level learning, presenting different avenues in which entrepreneurs can learn.

-     Individual level learning

We discuss different forms of individual level learning such as: cognitive learning, experiential learning and social learning.

-     Team level learning

We move to discuss team level learning and its significance to the dissemination of learning among members of the venture. We argue how individuals share knowledge among themselves, and the mechanisms in which they achieve shared mental models which support their ability to coordinate action through mutual adjustment in the venture. We discuss team learning as a critical component of routine development since it forms a bridge between individuals and the venture, playing a necessary role in transporting individual experiences to the venture.

-     Venture level learning

Finally, we discuss venture level learning as a process that leads to routine development. We illuminate how ventures learning takes place when experiences that are originally embedded in individuals become transposed in the organization in the form of routines.

Following the introduction of the different learning levels, we present an empirical case through which we delineate how experiences transpose from individuals to the venture by means of triggering mechanisms. We demonstrate how the team members managed move from a stage of informality where they were largely dependent on the experiences of their originators, into a stage where they routinized

behaviors and were able, thus, to perform activities reliably.

Chapter four: Routines and the critical role of the venture team

Given the importance of the venture-team for bridging the individual and the organizational levels of learning, this chapter sets out to explore how the team context can facilitate or challenge the way individual streams of experience permeate into the organization. However, we show that the context of the venture team in which learning takes place, can pose opportunities and challenges for learning to transmute into the venture.

We present a case of an ASO, in which the team consisting of academics and entrepreneurs failed to coordinate action through mutual adjustment, and therefore, were unable to work together to develop their venture. Due to their scientific training and experience, academics lack the necessary skills, knowledge or even mindset required for commercializing their products. To increase their chances of successful commercialization, they augmented the team by inviting entrepreneurs to counterbalance the technical competence with the commercial competence. This strategy, however, turned out to be challenging. As academics and entrepreneurs tend to have different educational attainments, they are also likely to hold different beliefs about the organization of the business, thus instigating fault lines (a virtual line that divides a team into sub-groups). Therefore, developing a degree of overlap in belief

systems is necessary for such a team to function productively and disseminate learning needed for routines to develop. In this way, this chapter offers two important insights:

-     First, it illuminates the critical role that venture teams play in the routinization of behaviors, suggesting that developing coordinated action through mutual adjustment is necessary for routinization to be attained.

-     Second, the chapter demonstrates that achieving coordinated action through mutual adjustment may be challenging in the context of ASOs, where member of the team often come from a non­commercial environment, demonstrating how members of ASO could undergo a fundamental reassessment of their abilities, beliefs, priorities, and even their view of the meaning of the work they do before they invite external members into the team.

Chapter five: Routines for efficiency or change!

With the ever-changing demands of knowledge-intensive sectors, ASOs must continually routinize different behaviors to remain agile and successful. As such, they may need to consider different forms of routinizing behaviors that foster exploration or exploitation. For instance, rapid changes in technologies typically demand experimentation in search of greater variation and novelty. Such demands call for “routinizing explorative behaviors” that foster experimentation and discovery. Alternatively, ASOs may need to incorporate incremental changes to existing procedures or technology features, which call for “routinizing exploitative behaviors” that favor efficiency and productivity.

In this chapter, we discuss why ASOs decide to routinize behaviors that foster efficiency or change and discuss a number of factors that may influence that decision. We present these factors by presenting case studies in four ASOs. We demonstrate how each of these ASOs decided to pursue routinization and why?

Chapter six: learnings and implications for your business

In this chapter, we bring together some learning outcomes and implications that entrepreneurs and practitioners can take and apply in their ventures. We provide an overall framework for routinization of behaviors, demonstrating the challenges and opportunities that can intervene in this process. This chapter aggregates the main triggering mechanisms that underlie how experiences can be transmuted into the venture.

O autorze

Ziad El-Awad is a researcher at Sten K Johnson Centre for Entrepreneurship- Lund university. His research explores the routinisation of task work in new ventures and the role that entrepreneurial ecosystems play in supporting new ventures' development. In addition, his research unpacks enterprising activities in and around entrepreneurial ecosystems and identifies policies and economic implications of such activities.

Blurb

This book discusses the importance of developing routinized behaviours in new venture development, explicitly highlighting the unique challenges that academic spinoffs face in this vital step towards successful business creation.

During the early development stage, new ventures are informally established and have few routines that inform organizational performance. However, the process of new venture development is characterized by high ambiguity; for example, entrepreneurs have to deal with ill-defined technologies that are only vaguely understood or delineated. They also need to gradually make sense of the connections between technological functions, customer preferences and market structures. At the same time, during the early stage of new start-ups, experiences tend to be personal, embodied in specific individuals, such as the founder or founding team. Benefiting from these experiences and developing successful businesses that can exist independently of these individuals requires that these experiences become embedded in the form of routines.

Presenting primary and empirical research, the author delivers a framework for the routinization of behaviours, demonstrating the challenges and opportunities that can intervene in this process. Finally, the author brings together implications that academics and practitioners can take and apply in their own ventures.

Ziad El-Awad is a researcher at Sten K Johnson Centre for Entrepreneurship- Lund university. His research explores the routinisation of task work in new ventures and the role that entrepreneurial ecosystems play in supporting new ventures' development. In addition, his research unpacks enterprising activities in and around entrepreneurial ecosystems and identifies policies and economic implications of such activities.