The “first match” between high-tech entrepreneurial ventures and universities: the role of founders’ social ties
研究了从未与大学合作过的高科技创业企业，如何通过创始人在大学工作期间建立的人际关系，提高与特定大学首次合作的可能性，并分析了地理和认知邻近性的调节作用。
Abstract This paper studies the collaborations between entrepreneurial ventures and universities by investigating the “first match” , namely, the probability that a given entrepreneurial venture, which has never established university collaborations before, forms a collaboration with a given university (out of all the possible collaborations it might have formed). Expanding on the literature about university–industry collaborations, we argue that the formation of the first match is socially bounded. Specifically, we contend that individual social ties, which the founders of an entrepreneurial venture have formed with the personnel of a given university as they worked there, increase the probability of a first match because these ties reduce the costs and increase the benefits of forming a collaboration (H1). We also hypothesize that geographical (H2) and cognitive proximity (H3) between entrepreneurial ventures and universities influence these costs and benefits, thus moderating the relation sub H1. Econometric estimations on a large set of dyads, which represent realized and potential first matches between Italian high-tech entrepreneurial ventures and universities, support our hypotheses.