There is great interest in evaluating the impact of private equity investments on innovation and economic growth. However, there is no direct empirical evidence on the effects of such transactions on the innovation strategies of entrepreneurial firms. We fill this gap by examining a rich...

Entrepreneurship involves innovation and uncertainty. We outline a theory of entrepreneurship, which highlights the importance of social networks in promoting innovation and reducing uncertainty. Our findings suggest that this “social” aspect of entrepreneurship increases the probability of...

The origin of ideas is an important topic to be addressed by eminent disciplinary scholars, and then debated, and then debated, and then debated yet again. Even addressing the narrower topic of the origin of entrepreneurial or innovative ideas is a bold if not presumptuous undertaking. In this...

U.S. technology-based initiatives at the state level continue to emphasize regional economic development and job growth. Many are now also focused on green technologies. This paper describes one such green program, the North Carolina Green Business Fund. Based on an analysis of 24 funded R&D...

There is an extensive literature on the success/failure of firm-funded R&D projects but growing policy interest focuses on publicly-funded R&D projects. Using data from 1,878 Phase II R&D projects funded through the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, of which 624 had been...

University proof of concept centers (PoCCs) are an organizational innovation intended to improve the dissemination and commercialization of new knowledge to industry. During the past 15 years, at least 32 university-affiliated PoCCs have been established at universities within the United States....

Five important policy initiatives were promulgated in response to the slowdown in U.S. productivity in the early-1970s, and then again in the late-1970s and early-1980s. These initiatives included the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, the Stevenson-Wydler Act of 1980, the R&E Tax Credit of 1981, the Small...

This paper models the entrepreneurial process as both creation and discovery composed of an iterative two-step process where entrepreneurs create social networks based on subjective expectations about the future effectiveness of those networks, and then choose the innovation to pursue and map a...

The flow of knowledge from a university research park is not a new theme in the academic domain, but those studies that have focused on the prevalence of this phenomenon in the United States have been somewhat limited in the availability of data related to both the genesis of the park as well as...

In this paper we identify the population of 32 U.S. university-related Proof of Concept Centers (PoCCs), and we present a model of technology development that identifies the economic role of PoCCs within that model. We examine the broad technology transfer challenges that PoCCs have been...