5. Discussion

Within the technology transfer mechanisms, the spin-off generation presented special attention, with a substantial amount of publications. This importance is also presented by several authors, indicating them as the most efficient mechanism (Di Gregorio and Shane, 2003; Wright, Birley, and Mosey, 2004; Wright, Vohora, and Lockett, 2004b). The academic spin-off makes technological development possible by translating innovative ideas from academic research to commercially viable products and services (Shane, 2004). The academic spin-off theme is relevant as evidenced by the existence of several special issues from important journals.

It was observed that this area presents diversified studies, with modification on time. Following, it is presented the discussion related to the research lines evolution pattern. From this, the theoretical lens and the maturity of the theme spin-off are discussed. Finally, the observations are considered to compare the two micro-environment of technology development process: inside the established companies and new technology ventures, with remark to the academic spin-off companies.

5.1 Research lines evolution

This work investigated the evolution of the spin-off research lines. The state-of-the art was investigated and it indicated the evolution of the spin-off related academic discussion. Within the spin-off discussion, the majority of the analyzed documents present spin-off as a technology transfer mechanism resultant from an Institution Innovation System. Thus, the spin-off efficiency and its ability in product commercialization is considered resultant of motivating factors promoted by the original institution, allied to the entrepreneur personal ability (Cripps, Yencken, Coghlan, and Anderson, 1999; Digregorio and Shane, 2003; Shane, 2004; Clarysse and Moray, 2004). The political, economic and social contexts influence the researcher in taking the decision to initiate the spin-off. They are macro and meso level studies in the Djokovic and Souitaris’s (2008) classification. Nevertheless, the spin-off success is related to other spin-off intrinsic factors, as its organizational structure, decision and culture (Helm and Mauroner, 2007). For this reason, it was expected the evolution of the focus toward this kind of discussion (micro level studies in the Djokovic and Souitaris’s classification).

For evaluation of the evolving pattern, it was used several evidence sources. About the hypothesis “There is a historical progression of discussion focus from the macro/ meso to micro level studies ”, the evidence source and some evidences observed are presented in the Figure 9 .

Figure 9 : evidence source and some evidences for the first hypothesis

The literature review, allied to obtained results, showed that spin-off related research presented gradual focus transformation. It was observed in the The temporal evolution of the academic spin-off discussion, more specifically in Figure 5, that the research lines discussing local innovation system for spin-off creation, and spin-off creation as a technology transfer mechanism is prior to the research line discussing internal organization for spin-off development. Publications of the Organizational Structure of Academic spin-off research line were observed only from 2006. For this reason, the technology development related researches were gradually passing from the public policy related discussions to more practical and specific discussions about how to conduct and manage more efficiently the technology transfer process. Initially, the focus was to the spin-off generation related, essentially describing as technology transfer mechanism. Recent documents presented focus on spin-off development through efficient management (Mustar, et al., 2006), hence, an evolution from meso to micro level studies in Djokovic and Souitaris’s (2008) classification is observed. The low amount of the micro level studies is concordant with the Rothaermel et al. (2007) and Fagerberg and Verspagen (2009)’s finding. The first indicates the university entrepreneurship area was mainly discussed by public policy researchers. The authors also indicate that recently the theme started to be discussed by entrepreneurship and strategy researchers. And the second showed that is very small the innovation discussion related to management.

The hypothesis “Academic spin-off related discussion is evolving toward an internal structure focus ” called for more detailed analysis in the microlevel studies. Some evidences are presented in the Figure 10 .

Figure 10 : evidence source and some evidences for the second hypothesis

As observed, the internal focus of spin-off discussion is more recent and not exhausted theme. A practical observation can conduct some discussions. The competitive factor related theme presented no 100% appearance in research lines. This is because this theme is discussed by the research lines through different approaches (aligned to other themes). Analyzing this observation in the Table 1 in conjoint with Figure 6 , the temporal analysis becomes possible. The competitive factor theme appears in the both groups Org_Str and in RI_CompF. Because the Org_Str is more recent than RI_CompF, it is possible to infer that the discussion of these themes evolved from a view in which the competitive factor of spin-off companies was defined by the Research Institution environment to a new view, the one which the competitive factor of spin-off is defined by the spin-off company’s structure.

Therefore, there are evidences that reinforce the newness and incipiency of internal organization related discussion. The publications of the Organizational Structure of Academic spin-off research line presented more concentrated documents in the recent years. In addition to this, there are several comments from authors pointing out that the spin-off development theme is not sufficiently discussed (Clarysse and Moray, 2004; Mustar, et al., 2006), especially when related to the new product development theme (Heirman and Clarysse, 2007). The future developments suggestions point the discussion relating Evolutionary Perspective - the capability and consequent internal structure development. The use of this theoretical lens means that management theories can be used to study the spin-off companies.

Theoretical lens

For the hypothesis, “The evolutionary approach discussion is a new and emerging approach inside the academic spin-off related academic discussion papers ”, the Figure 11 presents some evidences for this item discussion.

Figure 11 : evidence source and some evidences for the third hypothesis

The Evolutionary Perspective-related academic spin-off discussion was presented as an approach for future academic researches by some authors (Mustar, et al., 2006; Boccardelli and Magnusson, 2006). This area of knowledge inspired some documents in the following foci: (i) related to spin-off competitive factors identification (Powers and Mcdouglall, 2005; Rangone, 1999; Scholten, 2006) and (ii) related to the internal capability development (Mustar, et al., 2006; Boccardelli and Magnusson, 2006) The first focus is the RBV discussion identified by Rothaermel et al. (2007) in the university entrepreneurship area. The second approach, by definition, is more evolutionary.

In the identified research lines, three lines presented this (Evolutionary Perspective) theme: Compet_F (60%), RI_CompetF (43%) and Org_Str (40%) (see Table 1 ). The first two lines are prior to the third line and present discussion focused on competitive factors identification. This identification is resource focused and is inspired by Resource-Based view (RBV). This view says that companies present heterogeneity because its evolution history, and its previous definitions. The aim of some of these works was looking for factors that were associated with success of the companies. Nevertheless, this could be discussed as been against the essence of this view that says that what makes resources advantageous is its rareness and inimitability (VRIN) (Barney, 2001). Hence, the searching of commonly resources that originates greater revenues or survival, for example, becomes meaningless, especially when occurs the change of environmental configurations, including status of the competitors.

It is possible to observe discussions related to evolutionary perspective in the most recent Org_Str line, discussing the spin-off company’s development and its internal structure. The discussion of this approach is related to internal capability development. This process is the result from the interaction of the spin-off with its environment and with the research institution which it comes from. The spin-off company survival and growth is dependent on the resource (mainly human, financial and technological) adjustment. In order to achieve this, the strategy and business model definition is important (Mustar, et al., 2006). Boccardelli and Magnusson (2006) pointed the importance of future discussions related to initial dynamic capabilities in spin-offs.

Maturity of the theme spin-off

The research domain maturation was understood as the phase that the domain was fully developed. If a domain were fully developed, possibly there were not observed so much new publications, or the recent publications must be more practical and applications of previously developed theories, for example. So, this work investigates some aspects as evidence: several knowledge areas interacting to discuss the theme; that the generated knowledge develops sufficiently to be applied to real company situation; and declining of number of publications.

Aiming at conducting a discussion about the research lines maturation, it was considered that possibly could be considered as evidence if the research becomes practical and applied to real company situation. So, an analysis was carried out concentrated on the following three most applied topics: (i) company’s management, (ii) new product development and (iii) decision making process. Those items were analyzed as indicatives of the research lines evolution to a more practical and applied research, developing tools for the use in the companies. Related to topic maturity of the spin-off discussion theme, the Figure 12 presents some evidences for discussion.

Figure 12 : evidence source and some evidences for questioning theme maturity

It is possible to observe that the spin-off theme presented several special issues from different and complementary journal from slightly different areas. The practical consideration as management was observed in very small number and in recent documents. For this reason, there are some evidences of the academic discussion about academic spin-off management being already incipient, started by the research line Enterp_T and more focused by Org_Str. Possibly it indicates that is needed further academic development for more practical considerations.

Related to the topic declining number of publication, the evidences show the contrary. The spin-off is yet a rising theme for academic discussion, although with different approaches.

5.2 Comparing with the broader technology development area

This work proposed to compare the technology development inside the spin-off companies with the broader technology development management knowledge area. Although the broader technology development management area presents more practical considerations for managerial themes, the specific type of technology development, which occurs inside the new technology venture, appears to present less practical discussions.

It is possibly caused because the discussion started originally in the Economy and Public Policy-related areas. Nevertheless, the importance of the new technology ventures in introducing new technology is non-negligible, as observed by the notorious importance of this company’s generation in several industries (Shane, 2004). As shown in the resultant knowledge evolution pattern description, this specific topic could be described as concordant with the broader theme, whereas with some delay. The evolution pattern shows that some recent discussions come closer to practical discussions, as discussions related to management, product development, and organizational structure. From this, it is possible to expect in this spin-off related academic discussion more practical consideration, with managerial and internal organization structure focused discussions. As this kind of company initially is more likely to present not so structured processes, the already observed capability focused discussion could be an alternative.

So, for example, the well discussed entrepreneurship perspective could change from the focus on individual entrepreneur to the corporative entrepreneurship focus, discussing how to structure the organizational routines and capabilities that will enable creativity, pro-activity, entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology development. From this discussion of how to structure, possibly will surge some discussions regarding practical tools that will enable implementation, as assessment, decision taking, and performance measurement tools. These tools using capabilities and routine as object of analysis are available for some situations, but were not possible to identify in the current status of the literature for the spin-off companies.

5.3 Adequacy of the obtained results

A feature that must be considered is the analyzed document amount. The number of documents consulted fairs to represent the totality of the published documents related to the theme. The authors consider that the method enables to work with a fraction of the population of literature available documents. It is supposed following considerations enable the qualitative representativeness of the population: (i) the presence in the database of significant amount of papers from relevant journals of the theme; and (ii) the use of web-based search tool, that enables search in different databases, that includes papers from relevant journals. From these propositions, it is supposed that the rate of the themes consideration is also representative. Therefore, as a complementing method for a qualitative research, it have not intended to consider the analyzed documents as representing the state-of-the art in the quantitative, but in the qualitative manner. The Figure 13 shows some elements for this discussion.

Figure 13 : evidence source and some evidences for the adequacy of the used method

The obtained research lines made the achievement of objectives of this work possible because the Organizational Structure of Academic Spin-off research line was the only one that presented great relative frequency of the organizational structure of the spin-off theme discussion. From this, it can be concluded that the obtained clusters represent this work’s proposal.

The similarity of the obtained research lines was visualized by multidimensional scaling (Figure 5 ). This method complemented the research line composition description presented in Table 1 . Both methods in conjoint enabled the research lines description and comparison. The analysis of research lines comparison, allied to the boxplot and presenting the temporal distribution of the documents, allowed the achievement of objectives. Some documents also complemented the results to obtain the conclusions.

After the database creation and analysis, related literature review papers were used for comparison purposes: related to spin-offs, by Djokovic and Souitaris (2008), and related to innovation area, by Fagerberg and Verspagen (2009). A related and complementing theme is the theme University Entrepreneurship. Hence, the Rothaermel et al. (2007)’s literature review has also used for some considerations for discussion purposes.