Academic spin-offs and the innovative city: Universities’ role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Boston

A metropolitan area may comprise multiple universities. Universities can differ in their aims, focus, and orientation. They can be either research- or teaching-intensive, promote liberal or technical education, be highly selective or serve the community as largely as they can. The area of Boston includes worldwide known and admired institutions, such as Harvard, the first university to have been established in the United States. Consequently, academic spin-offs also differ. The university of origin explains much about nascent academic entrepreneurs; it influences, orientates and sometimes determines the students’ intentions to start a business (Pruett et al., 2009), their preferences (Brennan et al., 2005) and personality (Walter et al., 2002), their motivations (Hayter, 2011), the public support received (Meyer, 2003), their research productivity (Lowe and Gonzalez-Brambila, 2007), and identity modification (Jain et al., 2009). While almost all these issues usually refer to the individual entrepreneur, we argue that the university can exercise an important and sometimes crucial influence on the spin-offs firms too (Baroncelli and Landoni, 2015). Academic spin-offs take action in a network of innovation. Thus, academic spin-offs in an urban context contribute to a city’s qualification as innovative (Simmie, 2001). Universities provide the elements to sustain the innovative city with a direct impact on local development. In this respect, academic spin-offs are at the same time an outcome of the interaction within the network and the actors of innovation themselves.