Academic Spin-Offs’ Growth: Exploring the Role of Team Vertical Diversity and Academic Knowledge Corridor

. The paper focuses on academic spin-offs (ASOs) and their team composition. To date, little attention has been devoted to investigating diversity of academic profiles by looking at individual academic positions, and how the growing accumulation of academic and scientific knowledge and experience over time may affect the new venture. Indeed, teams that are too immerse into the academic domain and distant to the commercial and market domain could hinder ASOs’ pace of growth. The aim of the paper is to explore whether the team composition in terms of disparity in academic team members relates to ASOs’ growth. In doing so, we focus on 110 operating Italian ASOs, founded between 2000 and 2012, and adopt a cluster methodology. Clusters are defined on team vertical differences in terms of individual academic positions—that is conceptualized and computed as disparity. We then assume that the higher the individual institutional position, the greater the cumulative experience matured into the academic domain, and the stronger the academic knowledge corridor. Results show that, as the academic knowledge corridor grows, the use of the logic of scientific research tends to predominate, so as the distance to the market and commercial logics, and ASO’s growth tends to be hindered. Implications are derived for academics and practitioners.