University venture capital in big data, regional and historical perspective: where and why has it arisen?

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the international comparative analysis of university venture capital (UVC), providing a quasi-experimental design for follow-up research and practice. The US venture capital industry, with its unicorn focused high-growth format opened up a venture capital gap. UVC transmutes academic innovation into high-tech firms, industries and regional renewal, filling interstitial funding gaps among angel, public and private venture capital offers. It is a knowledge-based industrial policy by Another Name, with direct/explicit and indirect/implicit versions, on a continuum with variation depending upon shifting ideological and competitive concerns. Beyond as of right “womb” provision, UVC capstones an academic innovation ecosystem of technology transfer, incubation and acceleration, translational research, proof of concept funds and entrepreneurship education. Venture capital, exemplified by Sand Hill Road, de-emphasizes classic regional development objectives, neglecting appropriability conditions such as academic and regional circumstances that UK and China prioritize. More modest firm formation outcomes are dismissed as failures, with entrepreneurs encouraged to return to the entrepreneurial churn. We examine the origin and development of UVC from macro, meso and micro, historical and comparative perspectives. Multi-method/multi-sample, comparative case study, and big data analytics show the constraint, variety, and early affinity of UVC to academic icons with significant untapped potential to inspire widespread economic and social advance.

KEYWORDS:

• Innovation
• University Venture Capital (UVC)
• entrepreneurial university
• appropriability condition
• socio-economic transformation
• university-industry-government triple helix innovation model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Henry Etzkowitz, personal conversation with Harriet Zuckerman, Vice President Mellon Foundation and Professor of Sociology Columbia University, circa, 1985 Her specific comment referred to a large grant from the NSF Policy Division, rather than Sociology Program, with smaller albeit higher status awards.

2. See https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/regional-innovation-engines.

3. Henry Etzkowitz interview with Justin Straubaugh, principal, Lake Shore Ventures, August 2022.

4. Compton Papers, MIT Archives.

5. Henry Etzkowitz Interviews with MIT Asst. Treasurer, Allan Bufferd and Professor James Utterback, MIT innovation faculty member with responsibility for the transition, 1984.

6. Such ties role in future wealth generation was the subject of a letter to the Stanford Daily by an African American alumnus who wryly and ruefully noted that black students success in securing separate housing facilities had cut them off from participation in networks that another observer (found endemic to “Get Rich Quick University”, a sardonic epitaph for a knowledge-capitals (human, financial, social) efflorescent symbiosis.

7. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmtrdind/87/8709.htm (accessed May 15 2020).

8. See https://www.bioindustry.org/policy/finance-tax-and-investment/finance-report-2021.html.

9. UK Biotech success continues as sector secures a record year of investment in 2020 | BIA (bioindustry.org) (accessed August 24 2022).

10. Spotlight on spinouts. UK Academic spinout trends April 2022.

11. Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

12. IP Group works with a range of UK universities, and also internationally.

13. Interviews in 2022 with Miranda Weston Smith: Catherine Aman, Press and media Manager, Cambridge Enterprise; Edward Benthall, Chairman, Cambridge Innovation Capital; Matthew Bullock, former Master, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge and Former Head, Barclays High Technology Financing Team; Dr Anne Dobrée, Director of Programming, Cambridge Enterprise; Dr Cassie Doherty, Investment Director, Parkwalk Advisors; Dr Richard Jennings, former Deputy Director, Cambridge Enterprise; Dr Kate Kirk, writer and speaker on the Cambridge technology cluster; Alastair Kilgour, Chief Investment Officer, Parkwalk Advisors; Dr Christine Martin, Head, Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds; Martin Rigby, Managing Director, ET Capital; Chris Smart, General Partner, Acacia Capital Partners; Dr Robert Tansley, Partner, Cambridge Innovation Capital.

14. Technology transfer in Britain: The case of monoclonal antibodies, E M Tansey, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine & P. P. Catterall, Institute of Contemporary History, Taylor Francis Online, P409–444, published online 25 June 2008.

15. Parliamentary Business, Select Committee on Science and Technology, Minutes of Evidence. Memorandum submitted by Cambridge University 17 January 1999. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/cmsctech/17/9020102.htm.

16. The evolution of knowledge transfer in Cambridge, 25 May 2015, Business Weekly.

17. Extracted from CRIL Nominees Periodic Statement dated 30 November 2021.

18. 10 years of Cambridge Enterprise, 50 years of technology transfer, Cambridge Enterprise 2019.

19. Cambridge Enterprise 24 November 2010 https://www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/news/cambridge-challenge-fund-marks-ten-years/.

20. 10 years of Cambridge Enterprise, 50 years of technology transfer, Cambridge Enterprise 2019.

21. As above for 20.

22. As above for 20.

23. Guidance note from the Research Office and Cambridge Enterprise: IP Policy in practice – how it works, who to approach and when? https://www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ip-policy-in-practice-guidance-note-25may10.pdf 24 June 2010.

24. 10 years of Cambridge Enterprise, 50 years of technology transfer, Cambridge Enterprise 2019.

25. Dr Christine Martin, Head of Seed Funds, Cambridge Enterprise, Parkwalk website https://parkwalkadvisors.com/fund/university-of-cambridge-enterprise-funds/.

26. Cambridge Innovation Capital news online 27 April 2022 https://www.cic.vc/news-insights/cic-news/2022/225m-raised-for-cambridge-innovation-capital-s-fund-ii/.

27. Cambridge innovation in numbers, collated by CBR and the Cambridge Judge Business School, December 2021.

28. See https://www.jiemodui.com/N/128703.html.

29. See https://www.jiemian.com/article/2153293.html.

30. First author interview with Jim Wilkinson, Director, Oxford Innovation Fund. The Fund’s underutilized office space at the periphery entryway to the Colleges, was gradually being turned over to house Oxford generated firms, informally mentored by the Fund’s director. This phenomenon will likely inspire formal accelerator and incubator projects, on the one hand, and revision of rules as necessary to permit academic laboratory incubation, reprising MIT’s Compton era practice and contemporary 2004 Brazilian Innovation Law, encouragement e.g., 4B biotech firm, University of Rio Grande del Sul, superseding US Inurement strictures.

31. Also: interview by the first author with Jim Wilkinson, CFO Oxford Sciences Innovation, 2018.