Determinants of universities’ spin-off creations

Abstract

The idea of entrepreneurial university seeks to boost the transfer of academic knowledge to firms and foster socio-economic development. The main objective of this paper is to examine the various determinants that influence universities knowledge transfer activities. To fulfil this objective, we draw our dataset from the higher education and business survey (HESA-BCI) conducted across the United Kingdom in the 2017/18 academic year and the partial least square structural equation was used. The Results demonstrated that funding, patents, and rewards all have significant influence on universities spin off creation. The results also showed that patents played a significant mediating role towards universities spin off creation. Findings of this study contribute to validating the important factors that promotes entrepreneurial activities at universities as well as contributing to knowledge transfer activities. The findings have positive implications for researchers, academic entrepreneurs, and university management aiming to exploit and commercialise university knowledge.