Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Abstract

Academic Spin-offs (ASOs) are defined as new ventures rooted into the academia research results (Visintin and Pittino, 2014), founded by academics personnel and then pivoted on their academic and scientific knowledge. Among the various factors that may affect ASOs' growth and survivorship, the academic debate has long focused on team composition (Mathisen and Rasmussen, 2019), producing disparate and in some cases conflicting results (Nikiforou et al., 2018). Two issues emerged as of particular interest: the decision-making heuristics underlying the choices of team composition, and the different conceptualizations of team diversity and their influence on ASOs. In addition, a micro-segmentation of the early-phases of ASOs development emerged as needed to better analyze team composition issues (Mathisen and Rasmussen, 2019). After presenting the results achieved on already published research, the seminar focuses on the next steps in grasping the impact of different measures of team diversity applied to ASOs context.