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...

Young technology-based firms are widely recognised as important drivers of economic renewal and growth. Many statistical studies have been carried out to ascertain the attributes of the more successful ventures. Most studies are based associations between measures of firms’ growth and other...

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...

This paper aims to identify how entrepreneurial responses to ‘barriers’ can give rise to opportunities for new firms. The poor predictive record of studies analysing success attributes and favourable initial factors as determinants of new firm growth reflects the diversity of entrepreneurial...

This paper explores ways in which new ventures not only adapt to but can transform their own business environment. It proposes a new way to combine evolutionary and Penrosian resource-based theories. A parallel is drawn between the proactive response to resource shortfalls and under-use in the...

This paper analyses the association between dynamic capabilities and new firm growth, controlling for measures of firm resources, characteristics of the entrepreneur, and aspects of the environment. The central research question is: How strong is the relationship between dynamic capabilities and...

This paper examines the industrial incentives for commercialising advanced materials and, in particular, nanomaterials with reference to issues raised in the technology strategy and technology entrepreneurship literature. We draw on longitudinal empirical data to show that smaller and newer...

The promise of technological developments in advanced materials is attracting increasing attention, but their commercialization raises numerous challenges for incumbents and new entrant firms. These are summarized in a conceptual model of technological innovation as a matching process and in a...

The creation of novelty and its subsequent retention or elimination by evolutionary mechanisms is a central theme in complexity studies. By examining the evolution of three information and communication technologies, this paper explores linkages between variety generation, selection and...

This paper investigates opportunities and obstacles facing new environmental ventures. It does so first through a review of prior work on the growth of new ventures, then through an examination of new empirical research from the UK. Evidence from a database of 73 micro-SMEs allows a comparison...