Spin-offs and technical entrepreneurship

Abstract

The study centers upon new, technologically based firms founded on the San Francisco peninsula since 1960. Spin-off rates were calculated for individual organizations and for different classes of organizations in this area. It was found that organizations varied widely in the extent to which they had served as incubators of new firms. Firms with less than 500 employees and small subsidiaries had higher spin-off rates than large firms. Nonprofit organizations served as incubators for only a small percentage of the new firms. Limited evidence suggests that, within large firms, the large divisions had the lowest spin-off rates.