1. Kick off lecture
Entrepreneurship & New Business
Development
Dr.ing. Wynand Bodewes

2. KU Leuven is entrepreneurial
2

3. KU Leuven
• "The added value of the economic activity that [KU Leuven]
brings to the Leuven region runs into the hundreds of
millions of euros.
• Our spin-offs alone have generated upwards of 4,000
additional jobs. But there is more.
• When LRD agrees to fund a spin-off, it also confers a kind of
seal of approval, and that has shown to work as lever in the
financial world.
• To give you an idea: a €7 million investment by LRD led to
an investment of €630 million euros from external sources."
• Prof.dr. Koenraad Debackere, Executive Director LRD
3

4. This course helps KU Leuven
students to be entrepreneurial
4

5. 5
Qualenica was selected by a network of private investors (BAN
Vlaanderen) as the second most promising business model in
Flanders. A reward of € 7,500, in addition to a wide range of
benefits, is welcome for our young company. After a successful tour
in the landscape of Belgian pharmacists, there is now also a
confirmation from the financial world.

6. Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Research Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/respol
Startups by recent university graduates and their faculty: Implications for
university entrepreneurship policy
Thomas Åstebroa,∗
, Navid Bazzaziana
, Serguey Braguinskyb
a
HEC-Paris, 1 Rue de la liberation, 78351 Jouy-en-Josas, France
b
Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 31 January 2011
Received in revised form
24 November 2011
Accepted 5 January 2012
Available online 7 February 2012
Keywords:
Academic entrepreneurship
University policy
Spin-offs
Students
a b s t r a c t
Earlier research on the role of universities in fostering entrepreneurial economic development almost
exclusively covers spin-offs by faculty and staff. In contrast, we provide general evidence from the U.S.
showing that the gross flow of start-ups by recently graduated students with an undergraduate degree
in science or engineering is at least an order of magnitude larger than the spin-offs by their faculty, that a
recent graduate is twice as likely as her Professor to start a business within three years of graduation, and
that the graduates’ spin-offs are not of low quality. Three case studies illustrate how universities may
stimulate science and engineering students and recent graduates to create new firms of high quality.
We conclude that transforming university goals and practices toward increasing start-ups led by faculty
might not be the most effective way for universities to stimulate entrepreneurial economic development.
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The last forty years has seen an increasing rate of spin-offs from
university research.1 And an increasing fraction of academics are
engaging in entrepreneurial activities (Thursby and Thursby, 2007).
The dramatic increase in the rate of university spin-offs over the
past decades is attributed to several reasons: the germination of
biomedical research in the 1970s, the passage of the Bayh-Dole act
in 1980, increased financing of research by industry, changes in
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 1 39 67 74 63.
E-mail addresses: astebro@hec.fr (T. Åstebro), bazzaziann@hec.fr (N. Bazzazian),
sbrag@cmu.edu (S. Braguinsky).
1
The Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) which collects data
on technology licensing and spin-off activities from technology licensing offices
(TLOs) at U.S. universities and research institutions report 3376 spin-offs between
1980 and 2000, and another 2885 spin-offs between 2001 and 2007. The total num-
ber of yearly spin-offs in the U.S. has risen from approximately 59 in 1991 reported
by 98 universities, to 366 spin-offs from 141 universities in 2000, and to 502 spin-offs
from 155 universities by 2007.This acceleration is not confined to the U.S. There is a
concomitant increase in other countries across the world. For example, in the U.K. the
cumulative number of still active spin-offs based on inventions at U.K. universities
was 1307 in 2007/2008, with an addition of 219 spin-offs from 163 universities in
that year (Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2009). This could be com-
pared to an annual rate of approximate 70 spin-offs from 102 universities at U.K.
universities in the years 1994–1999 (Charles and Conway, 2001). Moreover, signif-
icantly more companies are started based on research at universities than official
numbers reveal since not all spin-offs are disclosed to university TLOs (Allen and
Norling, 1991; Fini et al., 2009; Markman et al., 2008).
university guidelines and behavior, and changes in the scientific
ethos of faculty and researchers (Mowery et al., 2004).
The rapid increase in university spin-offs has stimulated policy
research trying to explain differences in spin-off rates across uni-
versities. The goal of this research, sometimes implicit, has been
to guide policy-makers trying to foster entrepreneurial economic
development through university, state and federal policy. Most of
past research and empirical work on university spin-offs thus focus
on the role of university policies, government regulation (in par-
ticular the Bayh-Dole act of 1980), the organization of technology
licensing and transfer activities, and researcher incentives. How-
ever, the empirical evidence on the impact of universities on new
business formation typically does not cover firms started by recent
university graduates because these are most often not using IP
based on university research funding and so these start-ups do
not get reported systematically.2 A potentially large part of the
entrepreneurial activity stemming from universities thus never
gets recorded, and is hardly ever discussed. Indeed, our review of
previous literature reveals that only a few articles have covered
start-ups by recent university graduates.
To rectify the paucity of information on a potentially important
impact of universities, we first compare the gross magnitude of
start-ups by recent graduates with an undergraduate degree in sci-
ence or engineering relative to the gross magnitude of start-ups by
2
University graduates may on occasion be involved in startups through past
university research projects and these may thus be registered at TLOs.
0048-7333/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.respol.2012.01.004
6

7. Earlier research on the role of universities in fostering entrepreneurial economic development
almost exclusively covers spin-offs by faculty and staff. In contrast, we provide general evidence
from the U.S. showing that the gross flow of start-ups by recently
graduated students with an undergraduate degree in science
or engineering is at least an order of magnitude larger than
the spin-offs by their faculty, that a recent graduate is twice
as likely as her Professor to start a business within three
years of graduation, and that the graduates’ spin-offs are not
of low quality. Three case studies illustrate how universities may stimulate science and
engineering students and recent graduates to create new firms of high quality. We conclude that
transforming university goals and practices toward increasing start-ups led by faculty might not be
the most effective way for universities to stimulate entrepreneurial economic development.

9. Team:
Dr.ing. Wynand Bodewes
Prof.dr. Koenraad Debackere
Jelle Braes
Wytse Joosten
Fréderic Van Wassenhoven

10. Today:
18.00-18.45
What to expect
19.00 - 19.30
What to do
19.30 - 21.00
What it might bring

11. What to expect
• We start today by exploring the process dynamics of
entrepreneurial activity.
• We then will explore the origins of entrepreneurial
opportunity,
• review how entrepreneurs screen and develop the
opportunities that they discover, and you will
• unravel how entrepreneurs seek to appropriate the returns
from their enterprising behaviour.
11

12. This course . . .
• provides a bird’s eye view on the entrepreneurial process in
which opportunities are transformed into value creating
economic activity. It aims to provide an understanding of the
how, where, when, whom and why of entrepreneurial
initiative.
• However, our ambitions go beyond helping you to learn, we
also want you to feel (more) empowered to engage in the
entrepreneurial process itself.
• You will learn that there are at least two ways to enact the
entrepreneurial process: [1] develop new business for an
existing firm and [2] develop new business that will result in
new venture creation
12

13. Entrepreneurship is the
relentless pursuit of
opportunity without regard
to resources currently
controlled.
Howard Stevenson, HBS

14. Entrepreneurship results in:
14
• Economic growth
• Innovation
• Employment
• Competition
• Self actualisation
• Bankruptcy
• Imitation
• Experiments
• Knowledge spillover
• Fear
• Emancipation & Inclusion
•

15. Learning (for) Entrepreneurship
15

16. Entrepreneurship compared
16

17. Do you see opportunity?
17

18. Belgian entrepreneurs more ambitious:
18

19. Is entrepreneurship valued?
19

20. That is why this
course is (also)
about YOU

21. Topics covered in this course:
21
• Opportunity discovery and enhancement
• Competitive intelligence and market research
• Feasibility optimization through business modelling
• Planning the operations that will result from the pursuit of this
opportunity
• Outlining resource mobilisation for entrepreneurial initiatives
• Assessing the value promise of entrepreneurial opportunities

22. Course objectives
Knowledge:
• You are able to explain and illustrate the unique qualities of
the entrepreneurial process, both both for internal venturing
and for launching a startup company.
• You understand the role that business planning may have
(at the beginning of) the entrepreneurial process.
• You are able to explain how entrepreneurial opportunities
are discovered and created.
22

23. Course objectives
Skills:
• You are able to evaluate the attractiveness of product ideas
• You are able to evaluate the attractiveness and feasibility of
business models
• You are able to retrieve (sufficiently reliable) primary data as
input to a business planning process.
• You are able to develop and evaluate a sophisticated
business plan for an identified or given opportunity.
23

24. Course objectives
Competences:
• The ability to implement the newly acquired knowledge and
skills in a relevant business plan for an (technology-based)
internal venture or new company.
• The ability to propose, defend and critically reflect on
choices with regard to the high tech business venture.
• The ability to work together in an entrepreneurial team,
while also taking responsibility for one’s own actions and
learning.
• The awareness of entrepreneurship as a career option,
including an understanding of what type of entrepreneurial
role would fit oneself.
24

25. Business planning
• Why should you learn how to do proper business planning?
o As soon as they are printed, they are out of date. – They are
founded on endless assumptions.
o Creating them distracts you from "real work"
• Hmm, you may not need to plan to start a business, yet for
novice-entrepreneurs it may be helpful to “think aloud” how a
possible venture would operate.
o Thought experiment
o Motivational device
o Pedagogical instrument
25

26. Entrepreneurship ≠
Management or Strategy

27. Managerial thinking
27

30. What to do

31. Course design
• Lectures
– Introduction to the how and why of venture creation
• Field project
– Learning by doing
– Develop entrepreneurial skills – Confrontation with
self
• Grading
o Examination
o Business plan evaluation
o Self-reflection and peer-assessment
• Be ready to travel a lot during this course!
•
31

32. One process, two contexts
32

33. Where can you be entrepreneurial?
• Self-employed
o On your own
• Together with other cofounders
• Salaried
o Corporate venturing
o Product development
o Research & Development
o New Business Development
33

34. Two tracks
New Venture Creation
New Business Development

35. New Business Development
• The projects for the NBD track are provided by members of
VKW (a Flemish employers association).
• The companies that successfully submit projects for this
course will also provide guidance to the NBD teams.
• Those projects should have the potential to result in a new
internal venture for that company.
• In the past, student teams have worked for projects provided
by large firms (e.g. Unilever) as well as small to medium
sized companies (e.g. Java Coffee Company).
• Your assignment will be much broader than just the
conducting of a market research, you are to cover all steps in
a proper business plan
35

36. New Venture Creation
• Opportunities do not need to be based on a technological
invention; they should however be sufficiently valuable to
warrant a team effort of highly educated professionals (i.e.
you and your team members).
• In this course you are not to develop a proposal for a new
venture that is to serve (Leuven based) students.
• Instead you may want to identify (technologically enabled)
business opportunities to enter a B2B market.
• The KU Leuven can help you to identify valuable
opportunities through its extensive patent portfolio
• You can also search in a patent database (escapement) for
novel technology developed at other regional (university
related) research centers.
36

37. Be ambitious!

40. Will business planning help?
• its value varies systematically with
– the type of founding environment,
– the type of activities pursued in planning, and – the effort
devoted to specific activities.
• planning is to be embedded in a founding environment that
determines which rationale should govern planning activities.
– Munificent
– Trade-off (speed versus comprehensiveness)
• planning has an important impact on the achievement of venture
development milestones
• in some contexts, exhaustive planning is inferior to a more
selective planning approach
• Gruber, M. 2007. Uncovering the value of planning in new venture creation: A process and contingency perspective. Journal of Business Venturing,
22(6): 782-807.
40

42. Business planning for NVC & NBD
• Presents a credible outlook on what could become profitable
business
o Based on assumptions, informed guesses, and profound
insight on:
• People, Opportunity, Strategic options, Resource needs, Risk & Reward
• Enables “learning before doing”
– Cheaper, faster and/or safer
• The plan may act as a screening device
– Management (NBD)
– You and your helpers (NVC)
42

43. Course materials
• eBook
• Readings
• Course manual
• Sheets
• Links to relevant websites and
competitions
• Industry databases
• Belfirst (Chambers of Commerce info
on all Belgium firms)

44. To do:
• Next Tuesday (08-10):
• Choose your track:
• New Business Development: Create business plan for established company
• New Venture Creation: Create business plan for a company that you and your
team members could actually start
• Next class (15-10):
• We will communicate in which team you will be
• We are keen to mix students (disciplines, nationality)
44

45. This is not just a course

47. If you get nominated: we will pay your tickets!

48. Battle of Talents

49. Ondernemen zonder
ambitie

50. What it might bring
Working on a business plan can be
addictive, yet entrepreneurship also has
its dark sides . . .