The concept of knowledge transfer effectiveness as an analytical framework for reviewing the regulations on the creation of academic spin-offs in Spanish universities

Abstract

From the company model established in the second half of the 20th century in the USA, the generation of knowledge is facing a new distributed model demanding increased social interac- tion, where the academic system plays a fundamental role. After the incorporation of research as an added task to teaching (by the end of the 19th century), academia is undergoing a second revo- lution, representing a greater involvement of the University in the development of new businesses, thus with a special focus on knowledge transfer mechanisms, and with Academic Spin-O s (ASOs) as one of the most di cult knowledge transfer mechanism to implement with success. Then, en- trepreneurial universities, as producers of knowledge, provide resources to promote the transfer of knowledge by supporting the creation of companies. For this purpose, the regulations (or norms) that guide the creation of companies from the academia play a fundamental role in optimizing the resources from universities. However, the speci c way of implementing these regulations may in uence their e ectiveness as a mechanism for creation of ASOs. Within this context, this paper proposes to analyse the concept of e ectiveness associated to the norms framing the creation of ASOs as a tool for knowledge transfer, in order to decide if it can be used as an analytical model to assess and evaluate more accurately the ASO-creation process. Then, a selection of regulations for ASO creation from Spanish universities is analysed under this model.