Abstract:

This work is geared to analyze the relationship between Creativity vs Knowledge interactions, on the one hand, and the outcomes of research-based ventures, on the other hand. In particular, this paper focuses on the role played by such interactions during the design and implementation process of an advanced vehicle pooling platform in Southern Italy. The European Commission funding opportunities and the Italian Minister of Education, University and Research support the aforementioned platform. Therefore, it arises from an academic research project and is aimed at encouraging academic entrepreneurial activities in low-income regions conducted by young and highly-skilled researchers in the field of Smart Cities and Social Innovation. This research is realized by adopting a very comprehensive slant and by taking into account all potential stakeholders in order to capture and analyze all possible outcomes of the project. The different facets of the analysis are clustered according to the Creativity-Knowledge-Innovation (CKI) model (Palmieri and Giglio, 2014), hence, they are grouped by four perspectives: macroeconomic, socio-cultural, institutional and corporate. The evaluation process of such outcomes is composed of two steps. First, the outcomes originated from the research project are identified, listed and associated with one or more relevant perspectives. Afterwards, a qualitative assessment is realized by involving a panel of experts in order to determine to what degree the research project impacted on each perspective. By a methodological point of view, this work is characterized by a case study approach and is realized by means of a qualitative research. The research design combines literature review activities and a theoretical framework, which is based on the adoption of the CKI model and of a panel of experts. This study is original because of the integrated methodological approach, which includes a very recent theoretical framework in order to assess entrepreneurial initiatives with a wider slant than the existing one in literature – i. e. traditionally limited to the corporate perspective. Moreover, it is highly original also due to the focus on an emerging area concerning the academic entrepreneurial world. Academic entrepreneurs are scientists, mainly from public organizations, which are not mainly interested in new business, but seek also new pathways to keep on deepening their research lines. In addition, this paper provides field researchers with a better understanding of the influence of Creativity- and Knowledge-related resources on the effects generated by the start-up at hand. In fact, the proposed methodology can be easily applied in different contexts and makes it possible to capture such interaction dynamics. Therefore, in the long-term it allows also managers and governments to determine the better policies aimed at fostering Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship attitudes. Moreover, it allows them to evaluate and identify the possible issues for each perspective. Finally, this work represents also the first application of the CKI model to a case study. Therefore, it is also a tool to adopt as a guidance for applications in different contexts. In fact, it represents also a tool for researchers interested in assessing the impacts of academic entrepreneurial activities with a broader perspective, thus embracing all possible stakeholders, and contextualizing and replaying this work with other case studies.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, Academic Entrepreneurs’ Start-Ups, Creativity, Knowledge, Spin-Off.