Governance and Financial Performances: Evidence from NTBFS (New-Technology Based Firms) Governed by Academic People.

The aim of this paper is to present the results of a study examining the governance of academic people in new technology based firms grown in university incubators. We aim to verify if the presence of academic people improves survival skills and economic and financial performances of NTBFs when these leave the incubator. Moreover, we aim to verify if different roles in the Academy can bring to different levels of financial performance. Design/methodology/approach - The research has been carried out on a sample of 49 new technology firms based, mainly in Northern Italy, and graduated from the Turin Polytechnic’s Incubator, called I3P. Data about the presence of academic people have been obtained interviewing I3P CEO while firms’ survival skills and financial performance have been assessed by calculating economic and financial indexes (i.e. Altman Z score, ROI, ROE). Statistical correlation has been analysed using SPSS. Findings - The statistical analysis shows that there is a negative correlation between the variable used for addressing academic governance and that used for evaluating companies’ performance. Moreover, it seems that higher is the role of academic people in the Academy and lower is the financial performance of the related NTBF. Originality/value - While there is a broad attention on incubated NTBFs, there are only few researches regarding NTBFs when these leave the incubator. We focused our attention on the relationship between the governance of academic people, their role in the Academy and the financial performance of NTBFs.