The stickiness of university spin-offs: a study of formal and informal spin-offs and their location from 124 US academic institutions

This paper examines the cross–university variation in spin–off activity by faculty members from 124 US academic institutions, using a unique database including data on founders of both formal and informal spin–offs. Accordingly, the rate of spawning founders is positively affected by the quality of the institution and its departments, the R&D expenditure of the institution, and the strength of the local cluster. In addition, we find that institutions with higher licence revenues also have more spin–offs. In contrast to the traditional literature, we present evidence that both informal and non–local spin–offs are common and significant phenomena. Moreover, we find that the local cluster size and the university quality both increase the probability of spin–offs. However, when the relative quality of the institution is higher than the relative quality of the cluster, the probability of local academic spin–offs decreases.