The role of academic spin-off founders’ motivation in the hungarian biotechnology sector

Abstract

Increasing attention towards the role of universities in regional development has resulted in a large number of publications over the past quarter of a century. A sizeable body of literature shows a specific focus on academic entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial activities in academia may take the forms of externally funded research, earning of supplemental income, trade secret generation (Louis et al. 1989), contract research, sales and testing, external teaching, patenting, licensing or spin-off firm formation (Klofsten and Jones-Evans 2000). Some of these activities have long been present in the scientific domain. However, there seems to be a recent turn in academic entrepreneurship as specific tasks related to science-directed commercialization in forms of patenting, licensing and spin-off firm formation have become significant elements of scientists’ everyday activities (Gulbrandsen and Slipersaeter 2007). Etzkowitz (1983) argues that entrepreneurial universities created by the second academic revolution are the result of a natural evolutionary process of these institutions as a response to declining resources, increasing competition and requirements set by the knowledge economy (Etzkowitz et al. 2000; Goldstein 2009).