Can Academic spin-offs attract industrial and financial partners? The paradox of Legitimacy

Academic spin-offs face high difficulties with involving industrial and financial partners who, respectively, are relevant when academic spin-offs have no growth paths to choose between or when they need financial resources to address a specific one. These difficulties seem to be due to the legitimacy brought both by professors/promoters and universities of origin and, above all, to its paradox. Even if brought legitimacy can be relevant when new academic spin-offs are launched, later on it might represent a constrain limiting spin-offs’ growth. Industrial and financial partners, in fact, can wrongly perceive the carried-out activity as more research-oriented rather than market-oriented (this is what the authors mean by paradox of legitimacy). As a consequence, academic spin-offs are prevented from structuring and developing their own ecosystem and, thus, from growth. Theoretically speaking, the model presented herein is rooted in the resource-based view (RBV) and in the institutional link perspective (ILP).