Accessing Entrepreneurial Competencies through Networks: A Longitudinal Study of University Spin-off Emergence

We develop theory to better understand the role of networks in accessing the entrepreneurial competencies required to create new ventures within the academic environment. We follow the initiation and early development of four university spin-offs within the UK and Norway. Following a competency perspective, we observed how each nascent venture relied on strong and weak network ties to access three critical competencies needed during the start-up process. The usefulness of different types of network ties depends on the competency sought and varies throughout the start-up process. Ventures developed opportunity refinement competency through leveraging existing weak ties to industry partners and then building stronger ties to help exploit their novel technologies. By contrast, resource acquisition and championing competencies were accessed through initially building upon strong ties to resource providers and colleagues, and subsequently developing new weak ties to raise further resources and augment the entrepreneurial team. Theoretically, we synthesize the competency perspective with network theory to develop propositions to guide future empirical work. Our approach provides a novel multi-level and process oriented framework for understanding the role of networks in new venture emergence.