University spinoffs as vehicles for economic development: Implementing the changing role of the institution

As universities have seen their role rapidly evolve in the last two decades, they have learned to respond differently to their immediate economic context. However, not all universities have been equally successful in developing the capabilities that their new role demands. Many institutional, cultural and structural factors make this change difficult. In order to develop new capabilities and entrepreneurial skills, they must also learn to cope with technological and market uncertainties, and to be able to convert this knowledge into effective support tools for their spin-off firms. The new firms must also be able develop special abilities to capitalize on this knowledge and on the organizational networks that will provide them with indispensible talent, knowledge and social capital. In this paper we review the literature about this trend in the role of universities, and about those capabilities they have had to develop. We propose a model of those organizational capabilities and of the ways in which they interact with institutional contexts in which universities operate. We illustrate the application of the model with parallel case studies in countries with different institutional contexts, and assess the interdependence of university capabilities with the organizational networks in which they operate.