Regional Context and Academic spin off: effective or critical cooperation?

Several studies have point out the importance of the infrastructural support offered by business incubators to stimulate high-tech entrepreneurship, like academic spin-offs (ASO). Other studies connect the effectiveness of this entrepreneurial action with local characteristics and proximity between incubators, universities and ASO. The paper goals are to investigate the role played by the geographical proximity of business incubators and to analyze the characteristics of the socio-economic context that influence the development of ASO. Using a sample of 405 ASO and 162 incubators we show that the presence of incubators in the geographical area of ASO alone is not enough for them to reach better performance. This aspect is well-improved by participation of financial institutions in the business incubators, which increase the financial stability of ASO. Furthermore, the results indicates that the local context features have a positive effect on the ASO performance, underlings the role played by regional settings.