Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Parent Organization On Academic Spin-offs

Under the promotion context of technological and institutional innovation as"Two-wheel Drive",the innovation system with enterprises as the main body has shown a deeper level of innovation vitality.With the in-depth integration of the industryuniversity-research system,academic spin-offs have become one of the most important ways to transform scientific and technological achievements,contributing important corporate strength to solving social production needs and breaking through key core technologies.However,in the current research work on enterprise management,few scholars pay attention to the uniqueness of academic spin-offs.That is,different from the situation of general company spin-offs,academic spin-off’s parent organizations are academic research institutions dominated by universities and research institutes.Their academic background will inevitably affect their corresponding behavioral decisionmaking.Therefore,this study will analyze the association mechanism between parent organizations and academic spin-offs,and discuss the impact of parent organizations on the performance of their academic derivatives.The analysis of the parent organization’s role in the previous studies mainly focused on the support for the establishment of academic spin-offs and the intervention of operational management,but the dynamic analysis of the parent organization’s association mechanism in the growth process of the academic spin-offs was insufficient and made the conclusion of the parent organization’s influence uncertain.Therefore,this study chooses the key technology commercialization capabilities of academic spinoffs to analyze the impact of parent organizations on academic spin-offs at the early starting stage and the stage of stock market listing.Considering that the previous research on the association mechanism between parent organizations and academic spin-offs is mainly based on the background of developed countries,this paper first conducts an exploratory analysis with a case of one domestic academic spin-off company to provide hypothesis support for the current research.On this basis,focusing on the commercialize ability of academic spin-offs,the influence of three different forms of association mechanisms,parent organization support,control and equity participation is discussed through three sub-studies.The study 1 uses the survey data of academic spin-off enterprises of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.Partial least squares structural equation model is applied to demonstrate the three supporting pillars of the promotion of academic spin-off enterprises’ technology commercialization capabilities,i.e.parent organization path guidance,resource sharing and role balance.In addition,the moderating effect of the characteristics of the academic spin-off enterprises is taken as the supporting role of path mechanism,and it is found that the knowledge absorptive capacity of the enterprise is conducive to promoting the support role of the parent organization,and the influence of internal realization motivation in academic entrepreneurial motivation is more significant than that of external realization motivation.The study 2 is based on the high-tech enterprises listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share main boards.Through the fixed effect model of the least squares method of dummy variables,the differences in R&D investment are compared and analyzed between academic spin-off enterprises controlled via the equity of parent organizations and other technology enterprises.The results show that due to the intermediary effect of financing efficiency and government subsidies,academic spinoffs have a higher R&D investment tendency and pay more attention to the development of technology commercialization activities.The study 3 takes the parent organization’s shareholding ratio as a proxy variable for the degree of closeness,and further subdivide the relationship between the parent organization and academic spin-offs in the first two studies.By calculating the total factor productivity and technology commercialization capabilities of academic spin-off companies,the panel data is constructed,and regression results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the closeness of the relationship between the parent organization and academic spin-off firms and total factor productivity.The technology of academic spin-off firms Commercialization ability positively promotes the total factor productivity of enterprises.At the same time,the non-technical background characteristics of the senior management team effectively alleviate the negative impact of the inverted U-shaped relationship,while the technical background characteristics of the senior management team negatively moderate the positive impact of the technology commercialization ability of academic spin-offs.The main contributions of this study are:(1)It reveals the important significance of technology commercialization capability to the growth process of academic spin-off companies,and finds that the association mechanism of parent organizations shapes the technology commercialization capability of academic spin-offs and helps form a sustainable business mode;(2)It discusses the moderating mechanism of academic spin-off enterprises’ knowledge absorptive capacity and academic entrepreneurial motivation on technology commercialization ability.When analyzing the effects of parent organization,the impact of academic spin-off enterprise’s own characteristics is introduced.(3)It explains the reasons for the high R&D investment of academic spinoff enterprises.The high-tech industry background of academic spin-off enterprises leads to high demand for R&D funds,and the existence of parent organizations enables enterprises to have more effective external financing channels and ensures the sufficiency of R&D funds.(4)It finds the influence of parent organization’s shareholding on academic spin-offs,and elucidates the inverted U-shaped relationship between the academic spin-offs’ performance and the degree of closeness between parent organizations and academic spin-offs.The conclusions of this study have the following implications for the management of academic spin-off enterprises:(1)For government departments,academic spin-off enterprises have a better R&D investment tendency and lower R&D subsidy moral hazard due to the influence of the parent organization.Therefore,subsidizing their innovation activities will help improve the efficiency of the transformation of scientific and technological achievements;(2)For academic research institutions,as the parent organization of academic spin-off enterprises,they provide more incubation support and help enterprises improve their technology commercialization capabilities.At the same time,the parent organization’s shareholding ratio in academic spin-off enterprises should be reasonably designed;(3)For academic spin-off enterprises,this study provides a path for enterprise growth,namely academic entrepreneurship-acquisition of parent support-improvement of technology commercialization capability—enterprise development,to achieve a sustainable profit model that balances technological innovation and economic interests;(4)For scientific researchers,if they want to create an academic spin-off enterprise or participate in enterprise management,they need to increase their comprehensive knowledge of being an enterprise manager as well as an academic entrepreneur with compound abilities.This study also has certain limitations:(1)The number of samples in the primary data is limited because of the difficulty in collecting sample data for academic spin-off companies;(2)The selection of proxy variables in the secondary data,through it is an innovative approach that the parent organization’s shareholding ratio characterizes the degree of association with academic spin-off companies,but in reality,the impact of the ownership structure between the parent organization and academic spin-offs on corporate management decisions is more complicated;(3)An in-depth discussion of the parent organization on the role of organizational dynamics is still wanted.According to the enterprise life cycle theory,enterprise development will go through four stages:start-up,growth,maturity and decline.This research only intercepts the development stage of academic spin-offs,while a full and comprehensive discussion of all situations is still wanted.