Barriers to academic entrepreneurship in knowledge based spinoffs: evidence from Spanish research groups

In this chapter, we will discuss the role of knowledge as a strategic resource for companies. Universities focus on knowledge development as the main result of their research groups activities; but really few exploit this intangible resource through knowledge-based spinoffs (KBSOs), given some internal barriers that hinder the academic entrepreneurship activity. In order to identify them, is performed an exploratory analysis with a population of 130 research groups belonging to social science and Humanities areas Faculties of Autonomous University of Barcelona. The results confirm the conclusions presented in previous studies regarding existence of two types of barriers to enterprise: structural and operational. Also, it evidences the existence of different types of research groups, and how the size, research area and principal researcher's academic status affect the way that barriers to academic entrepreneurship are perceived, as well as both transfer processes and entrepreneurial activity that are developed.