New Technology-Based Firms in the New Millennium IV

This eleventh volume derived from the Annual International High Technology Small Firms (HTSFs) Conference, and the edited book series of which it forms part, is a detailed testimony to the progress of academic research on this specialist, but highly important, area of industrial activity. In particular, research from this series is intended to provide a basis for new "evidence-based" government policy, although governments in many developed economies have often been seduced by "fads", in circumstances where policy solutions are crudely adopted without convincing evidence of their efficacy. None the less, it is most important for academics, although they may be occasionally ignored, to continue to pursue independent research of the type contained within this series in order to provide research-based policy options, and commentary on the quality of the current policy environment for HTSFs in different national contexts.

As in the case of previous volumes in this series, the current collection of papers inform many issues important to policy as governments seek to promote HTSF formation and growth. In this volume individual papers are grouped into three main sections; these are "Theory", "Strategy" and "Clustering and Spin Off Firms". Regarding Theory, all five papers grouped under this heading are concerned, either with high technology entrepreneurship in general, or academic high technology small firm entrepreneurship in particular, with four of the five papers strongly focussed on academic entrepreneurial examples. The Strategy section is again comprised of five papers, which broadly explore how diverse business ideas are operationalised in terms of strategy.

A long standing interest in academic spin-offs in this book series has been more recently re-invigorated by a sudden interest in clustering which, through the related topics of incubation, science park formation and sub-regional high technology clustering has prompted linked research on the formation and growth of HTSFs in specialist locations, mainly through spin off. In the final Clustering and Spin Off section, the four individual papers are either concerned with how "spin offs" can contribute to HTSF cluster growth in industrial districts, or in the environs of major core regional universities.