The Knowldge Tranfer 
Office, in collaboration with TECHNIS research group and TIME Master’s in Business Economics organise their
3rd Seminar for 2021-2022 on Tuesday November 23 at 13.00.

Speaker: Roberto Fontana,
Univeristy of Pavia

Presentation title: “How
far from the tree does the (good) apple fall? Spinout creation and the survival
of high-tech firms”.

Please follow:

https://zoom.us/j/91535594322?pwd=SEhZTHRkZENQYW10WXM0dUk1c1RUUT09

Abstract: We develop a model of spinout creation and
survival to explain how the initial product market strategies of spinouts may
differ with respect to their parent’s and how this difference affects their
success. We test the model using detailed information on all the entrants in
three markets in the Local Area Networking (LAN) industry during the 1990s. Our
findings are consistent with the implications of the theoretical model.
Concerning spinout generation, the parent firm’s technological know-how plays
an important role for differentiation. In particular, we find that spinouts
tend to imitate ‘average’ parents and ‘keep away from the extremes’ (i.e.,
parents whose know-how is ‘too good’ or ‘too bad’ with respect to the
technological frontier). Concerning spinout survival, we find that better
spinouts survive longer and that there is no direct effect of a parent’s
know-how on spinout’s survival. Finally, too much differentiation with respect
to the parent firm can be detrimental for spinout success.