Transitional practices in the pre-start-up phase of academic spin-off creation: an explanatory case study

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the pre-start-up phase of a university spin-off, investigating how a group of researchers becomes an entrepreneurial team through the transformation of its work practices. Towards this end, we adopt Bourdieu's relational social practice theory for developing a set of interrelated propositions regarding the role of transitional entrepreneurial practices and their underlying producing mechanisms in this phase. It is proposed that induced transformational practices and changes in the underlying mechanisms result in reinforcing dynamics that can break the circle of social reproduction of an academic research group and direct it towards entrepreneurship. The propositions are explored in a longitudinal case study of an academic entrepreneurial team in a European peripheral economy.