Factors affecting the growth of academic oriented spin-offs

Academic spin-offs are companies created by one or more members of a research laboratory with the purpose of commercializing the obtained results or the technologies produced within the university. During the last two decades, academic spin-offs have received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, however there are few studies in the literature regarding the factors that foster its growth (Ferretti et al., 2020). Based on these premises, this chapter aims to investigate more thoroughly the growth phase of an academic spin-off’s life-cycle, focusing in particular on the drivers that influence its growth. Moreover, a focus on the academic spin-off phenomenon in the food sector is provided. The methodology adopted is that of literature review, combining two different approaches: the bibliometric analysis and the keywords analysis.