Study note on technology venture

Study note on technology venture

References with extracted contents

Podoynitsyna, K., M. Song, H.v.d. bij and M. Weggeman. 2013. "Improving new technology venture performance under direct and indirect network externality conditions" Journal of Business Venturing  28, Elsevier: 195-210.

"Among entrepreneurial firms, new technology ventures (NTVs) represent a special case, requiring as they do extensive research and development effort under uncertainty, i.e. unpredictability of the venture payoffs..... Researchers traditionally distinguish among uncertainty related to technology, customers, and other market players ..... While a relatively high level of technology uncertainty is common for NTVs (McGrath, 1997), the levels of other types of uncertainty may differ substantially from one venture to another. One possible source of this variation is network externalities, which represent a set of unique and increasingly important challenges for the ventures";

"With technological advancement, people become increasingly connected, transforming a variety of traditional markets into markets with network effects (Stremersch et al., 2010; Wuyts et al., 2010). At the same time, Goldenberg et al. (2010a) reported that in more than 80% of the cases the discounted profit of a new product was 25% less in markets with network externality effects compared to markets without these effects. Thus, more and more markets will show network externality effects, and those effects can have substantial destabilizing influences on the economic value of the venture's products, and thus on their financial performance and survival. It is therefore important to understand how NTVs [new technology ventures] can manage the direct and indirect network externalities";

"Direct network externalities arise when the benefits a customer derives from using a product increase with the number of other users employing the same product, as in the case of fax machines, Internet instant messaging programs, or social networks (Katz and Shapiro, 1986; Schilling, 2002). However, before this takes place, the product's number of users must attain critical mass.... Indirect network externalities arise when complementary products or services are of importance for the value of the product, ....  The efforts of an NTV [new technology venture] to bring out complementary products and services for its main product are typically not sufficient. Not having complementary products from third parties signals lack of support to potential customers thereby lowering the probability of adoption";

Berardino, D.D. 2016. "Corporate governance and firm performance in new technology ventures" Procedia Economics and Finance 38, Elsevier: 412-421.

"Academic spin-off (ASO) is a specific type of new technology venture, that involve stakeholders and resources of both public and private nature and which are given the ambitious function of promoting local development by national research policies. Some authors identify a spin-off as the result of a parent organization active in research and development, such as Universities, University Research Centres, laboratories and private research organizations (Wright et al., 2007). ASO is an autonomous structure, nor a subsidiary of the parent organization, that exploit knowledge produced by academic research in a profit perspective, excluding non-profit organizations (Pirnay et al., 2003 Shane, 2004). These firms, in contrast to others original start-ups, represent an innovative way of transfer of research results to a productive and independent business (Robert and Malone, 1996), in which university provides, in the start-up phase, specialized services, expertise, technical equipment, financial resources";

"Literature distinguishes the product-oriented spin offs from research spin offs as a subcategory of new technology ventures and makes a distinction between firms able to attract management capabilities in the founding team and firms founded by individual researchers. In this last case, the managerial style and the objectives are the results of personal interests of academic inventor, who wants, first of all, to complete their research project and to increase their independence within scientific community";

"Different conditions can explain the low degree of growth: sometimes the business idea is linked to a weak technology or a contingent research, that make difficult to identify different applications useful for the market; some business are not able to attract financial resources, especially the venture capitalists, who don’t prefer to invest in companies where the managerial team is formed only by researchers without business experience (Mustar et al., 2006); often ASOs [academic spin-offs] tend to establish scientific collaborations that don’t contribute to sales growth and to business idea development";

Chitsaz, E., D. Liang and S. Khoshsoroor. 2017. "The impact of resource configuration on Iranian technology venture performance" Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Elsevier: 186-195.

"Technology is a pivotally important factor in optimal performance and growth of the enterprises, and leader firms invest heavily in acquisition of new technology. In these technological ventures firms must identify, decipher, hold, and improve resources to achieve superior performance ..... Technology ventures should identify and develop advantageous competencies through the ownership of valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable resources";

"Entrepreneurship research indicates that discovering opportunities (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000) and engaging in business development efforts (Nerkar and Shane, 2003) are carried out first by individuals and then by groups within the firm (Schumpeter, 1947). Firms with differing abilities with regard to timing and learning (Tsai and Li, 2007) can have performance differences even when they have similar capacity endowments. This notion builds on the argument that processes are an organizational-level construct that is critical for opportunity exploitation";

Munari, F., M. Sobrero and L. Toschi. (in print). "The university as a venture capitalist? Gap funding instruments for technology transfer" Technology Forecasting & Social Change, Elsevier.

"National governments and regional authorities have increasingly focused on the development of technology transfer (TT) activities in order to facilitate the flow of ideas from universities into industry. Unfortunately, the lack of private funding sources to support such activities in their different forms—the so-called funding gap—constitutes a major barrier to the effective commercialization of university technologies .... To address this challenge, various universities and public research organizations (PROs) have formally invested in the creation of internal financial mechanisms (i.e., “gap funding” instruments) in order to support translational research and fuel the growth of academic spin-offs, often in collaboration with public institutions .... In recent years, two complementary instruments have received increasing attention in policy debates and academic literature, namely, proof-of-concept (POC) programs .... and university seed funds (USFs)";

"USFs [university seed funds], instead, are early-stage VC [venture capital] funds that have the deliberate and explicit mission of investing in university and PRO start-ups to support TT [technology transfer] and the commercialization of university and public research endeavors. This general definition contains some features that define the nature of the USFs and differentiate them from other types of VC seed funds and from POC [proof-of-concept] programs. Compared with other types of VC funds, USFs explicitly focus on investment in university and PRO start-ups because they are either activated and managed directly by the university/ PRO, are partly funded by universities/PROs as limited partners, or involve formal partnerships or collaborations with universities/ PROs";

Dominique R Jolly & François Thérin (2007) New venture technology sourcing: Exploring the effect of absorptive capacity, learning attitude and past performance, Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice, 9:3-4, 235-248.

"Over the years, modes of technology sourcing have dramatically diversified, due to the growth of mergers and acquisitions as well as inter-firms alliances. Companies face, for example, difficulties in transferring one technology from one organization to another. Integrating a high-tech start-up after a take-over in a large company is also a well known difficulty that companies have to face. In the case of technological alliances, most of the companies report to be disappointed with the performance of technology consortia";

"Technology sourcing includes technological partnerships with competitors, with suppliers, with customers ......, as well as consortia .... This covers also technology acquisition with simple license acquisition or more complex take-over of other companies (Roberts and Liu 2001). Technology sourcing also frequently relies on R&D sub-contracting with universities and with public research centers";