Economic development practitioners and scholars recognize the link between universities and regional economic development. It is predicated on the spillover of knowledge from universities to commercialization. The literature has focused on the supply side, which involves university research and...

External finance is central for nascent entrepreneurs, people in the process of starting new ventures. We argue that nascent entrepreneurs use patents and prototypes in order to signal their ability to appropriate the returns from their innovation as well as the project's feasibility. Our...

External finance is a central issue for innovative nascent ventures. In this study, we argue that innovative nascent ventures may use patents to signal appropriability and prototypes to signal feasibility to potential investors. Using new data on 906 nascent ventures, we find that nascent...