Academic entrepreneurship in Italy

The establishment of academic spinoffs is a multi-faceted phenomenon, involving individual-, institutional-, and contextual-level factors. In this manuscript, we review the literature on the motivation to establish academic spinoffs and link it to the regulatory and policy framework. We document the evolution of this phenomenon in Italy, where 1,626 academic spinoffs have been established between 1981 and 2018. We argue that it is likely, for some of these spinoffs, that graduates or PhD students establish spinoffs out of necessity entrepreneurship rather than opportunity entrepreneurship, as a "pushed alternative" considering the small opportunities of stable jobs or career progress. The academic career is indeed a highly selective job path and who cannot remain in the system may be interested in spinning out a company to exploit to some extent the knowledge previously developed. The evidence of a high survival profile of this type of firms, despite not high growth rates, is coherent with the motivation leading to their establishment.