IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijeima/v21y2017i4-5p343-365.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gazelles versus Mice: understanding their characteristics and the specifics of growth as a performance measure for research-based spin-offs

Author

Listed:
  • Roland Helm
  • Oliver Mauroner
  • Kendra Pöhlmann

Abstract

Commercialising knowledge and technologies from public research centres, research-based spin-offs (RBSOs) play a pivotal role for technology transfer and thus contribute to regional development, economic wealth and job creation. Growth, however, is a highly debated and controversial performance measure for small businesses. Analysing the special growth patterns of RBSOs, the existing literature has put forward two extreme forms, Gazelles and Mice, with metaphorical characteristics. Drawing on a database of 177 spin-offs from publicly funded non-university research institutes, we investigate the specifics of those firms with an above-average growth rate and contrast them to their stagnating counterparts, trying to characterise Gazelles and Mice and explain the growth patterns with more detail in order to identify the potential for high growth rates as early as possible.

Suggested Citation

  • Roland Helm & Oliver Mauroner & Kendra Pöhlmann, 2017. "Gazelles versus Mice: understanding their characteristics and the specifics of growth as a performance measure for research-based spin-offs," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 21(4/5), pages 343-365.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijeima:v:21:y:2017:i:4/5:p:343-365
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=85686
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. K. Poehlmann & R. Helm & O. Mauroner & J. Auburger, 2021. "Corporate spin-offs’ success factors: management lessons from a comparative empirical analysis with research-based spin-offs," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(6), pages 1767-1796, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijeima:v:21:y:2017:i:4/5:p:343-365. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=7 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.