Entrepreneurial innovators have been agents of transformation throughout history, but they have not had the scope to perform this role in the environmental domain. We propose an explanatory model that depicts the processes that give rise to innovation by new entrant firms. We apply this model to...

High-growth firms appear to be key drivers of new industries and technologies. Here we investigate the contribution of these and other types of firm to a technology cluster, in the context of ‘creative destruction' shaping the evolution of the cluster. Evidence on the reallocation of scarce...

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the UK government has set out new economic priorities which include jobs and returns from investment in science and technology-based activity. In this paper we show that the Cambridge area already provides a microcosm for such a future economy, one that it...

Questioning the widespread tendency to view academic spin-outs as a homogenous category, the paper explores typologies of these companies using a Penrosean conceptualisation of entrepreneurial activity. We initially identify five main types of business activities pursued by academic...

The area around the city of Cambridge (the Cambridge Sub-Region) was the first centre of hightech activity to emerge around a university in Europe and remains one of the most active. It is seen both as a model for others to follow and as a source of increasing prosperity for the region and...

The failure of small firms to grow into large enterprises has been identified as a significant problem for the economy of the UK. This study examines the constraints facing IT firms in the Software and Computing Services sector in particular. Research was undertaken in the form of interviews...

Investors have been showing interest in prospects for new environmental technologies launched by innovative enterprises. We analyse the experience of young environmental technology firms going public on London's alternative stock market, AiM. While firms that launched in the boom attracted...

The field of advanced materials (AM) is expected to experience considerable growth and has the potential to make a substantial impact on numerous industries, markets and applications. Much like IT and biotech before it, advanced materials face the many commercialization challenges of...

Advanced material technologies have received considerable attention from the media as potential engines of economic growth in an increasingly knowledge based economy. However, the extensive contributions of novel materials are not yet fully appreciated. Advanced materials have potential to...

This paper examines setbacks in the early growth of new firms. Growth interruptions mark the unfolding, cumulative processes of firm growth overlooked in standard studies that use cross sectional methods. To probe for possible patterns in growth setbacks, we examined a cohort of 200 high...