Abstract Early-stage science-based ventures (SBVs) require a wide range of intellectual resources and practical know-how to successfully commercialize their technologies. Often SBV founders actively gain this knowledge through advisory relationships providing business and technology guidance. We explore the effects of both business and technology advisors in combination with the founder’s entrepreneurial and technology experience. We measure early-stage success in an SBV using application readiness, a novel concept that encompasses progress in both technology discovery and validation as well as market identification and application. Using hand-collected longitudinal data from 112 emerging science-based ventures associated with American universities, we find that business advisors have a positive impact on application readiness, while technology advisors delay it; and these effects are moderated by the founder’s experience. Remarkably, a small number of advisors can have the same impact as decades of experience. Our article unpacks underexplored mechanisms through which advisors—an often-used policy tool supporting entrepreneurship—are implemented in emerging science-based ventures and makes academic contributions to the literatures on technology commercialization, advisors and human capital.
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A policy mix experiment to promote start-up success: exploratory evaluation of the NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Industry University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) membership supplement
This paper investigates the outcomes of a policy experiment, the NSF SBIR/IUCRC Membership Supplement, designed to promote the success of small high-tech entrepreneurial ventures by providing subsidized memberships in university-based cooperative research centers (IUCRCs). Data collected via semi-structured interviews with representatives of 61 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) firms indicated that SBIR firms who used the supplement to join an IUCRC reported multiple R&D benefits including research cost avoidance, research savings, and access to expensive equipment. A vast majority of SBIR firms also reported realizing or anticipated realizing commercial benefits (e.g., new investors, new products, and improvements to existing products). As suggested by social capital theory, SBIR firms reported that the policy mix experiment helped them make new connections with faculty and industry. Following our qualitative results, a structural equation model was applied to test the effect of social capital as an antecedent of SBIR firm R&D and commercialization outcomes. Results suggested that the SBIR firms who developed more social capital through interactions with faculty and industry members realized significantly more R&D and commercialization benefits. Further, commercialization benefits mediated the relationship between social capital and the SBIR firm’s perceived return on investment. Overall, this study demonstrates the feasibility of subjecting mixed policy interventions to evaluative scrutiny and provides evidence that such instruments can have substantive and positive effects on small high-tech entrepreneurial ventures. We discuss implications for social capital theory, policy mix initiatives and entrepreneurship policy.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1655104
- PAR ID:
- 10176048
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Journal of Technology Transfer
- ISSN:
- 0892-9912
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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