BLUE OCEANS STRATEGY IN CREATING A UNIVERSITY SPIN-OFF: AN EXPLORATORY CASE

A university spin-off arises with the idea or the detection of a business opportunity in a university research group. These research groups can be from any of area knowledge: humanities, social sciences, engineering, or languages. The key issue is to detect a gap or an opportunity in which they can benefit and obtain an economic profitability for the group. Following the blue oceans entrepreneurship methodology, it is necessary to differentiate the company against the possible competitors and to know what factors are key and differential of the competitors, creating for the spin-off a blue ocean where there are no sharks (competitors) and being the only ones in the market. It is important and interesting to recognize those key factors of a University Spin-Off. These factors must be related to the resources that the university can provide them by injecting a high degree of innovation into these companies. Once the key factors are detected to differentiate a university spin-off from its competitors, these factors are relatively easy to analyze which attributes to eliminate, reduce or raise, the tougher challenge for manager is to create unique value for new buyers of products or services of the company. This paper aims to convey the importance of transferring knowledge to society through university spin-offs created by research groups and to carry out their business activity in a market in which these companies are the only ones offering their products or services.