In recent years notions like the ‘learning society’, ‘knowledge economy’, ‘information society’ have populated management and organisation debates, particularly as knowledge and learning are increasingly promoted as the new sources of wealth (Ball, 1991; Drucker, 1993). Moreover, a trend...

Building on the work of Penrose (1959), Richardson (1960; 1972) and others, recent contributions to the theory of the firm have emphasised the importance of endogenously developed capabilities and competences for building sustained competitive advantages (see, for example, Foss and Knudsen, 1996)....

The aim of the present work is to study the evolution of organizational knowledge within Academic Spin-off (ASO) firms throughout their life cycle. The exploitation of tacit and indivisible new knowledge developed in the context of academic institutions entails agency problems of different...