Research topics and Questions

Threshold Issues

• When to initiate and terminate support of start-ups. How to graduate the firms from an incubator
• Could also be applied to a portfolio of patents as well as companies

Portfolio Quality

• It is suggested that the licensing activity may not keep up, or be highly proportional with the increased activity in technology disclosures and patent activity.Hence this reduces the quality of the patent portfolio. Innovation hype and numbers game?

brainstorming solo?

by hos, 140409

Find out typical services offered in the 3 generic spin-off strategies

• low-selective
• supportive
• incubator

survey of companies who

• are trying to find an incubator
• are currently in an incubator
• have graduated or somehow left an incubator

^ | Ask the companies to rate the services, critical, helpful etc, similar to Lande

thesis but much more thorough with focus on services and resources needed in a

high-tech start-up.

survey of incubators, employees, managers there

• general stats on infrastructure
• what are the minimum criteria to be included in the support programme
• are there several entry levels, with different levels of support depending

on which criteria that are fulfilled.

• for companies already included, how to they leave the incubators?

Graduation, failure

• are there any official policies that demand certain resultats from

companies or is most of it/everything ad-hoc?

cost of services

• is is possible to get financial stats from incubators to approximate the

cost associated with different services offered?

Drafts for research questions, problems, and activities

• Do a survey of several research institutions to map "best practices". Could map the most commonly used, and perhaps som deeper analysis. If it is feasible to measure success rate of the different TTOs perhaps som success factors can be extracted from the survey results.
• A study of Spin-off policy, what support is given, any discrimination of external and internal entrepreneurs?
• Do a study of european TTOs, measure rate of technology closures and patent application, Compare this with the number of spin offs and licencees. Decreasing quality of patent portefolio? quantity over quality? ArticlePowersAndMcDougall2005, ResearchPolicy
• Create some scenarios for implementation of a spin off policy, perhaps incubator? Look at comparable organization, e.g.ESA?

-- HakonSkeide - 30 Jul 2009