Abstract:

The startup and spinout companies are the new trends to create wealth and capital and to accelerate exponentially the innovation ecosystems in the global economies in which the number of the patents shows their capacities in innovation; hence, most of the venture capital investments prefer those innovative companies that they have patents. Even though the financial power is the main catalyst of these innovative companies to penetrate into the markets and to be successful, it is not easy to access to the venture capital investments.

In this study, the effects of the patents’ numbers of the startup and spinout companies on the process of attracting the investments were analyzed in Turkey for the year 2020; consequently, the well-structured quantitative research had been strategically developed taking into account the Patent Report published in 2021, published by the different patent attorneys and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the ecosystem of Turkey.

The clustered data from the Patent Report had clearly showed that according to the data given in the Patent Report published in 2021, the best 20 startup and spinout companies of Turkey had 241 applied patents at the end of the year 2020. Among all these 20 companies, 10 companies were startups and 10 were spinouts. The 112 patents among the 241 patents were applied by the spinout companies of the universities. In other words, 46% of the patents were conducted by the spinout companies of the universities, while 53% of the patents were conducted by the startups companies in the different industries. Additionally, the data showed that investments were done in the 20 (again 10 companies were startups and 10 were spinouts) best startup and spinouts that they had 104 applied patents. In this case, those spinout companies had 58 (55%) applied patents, whereas the startup companies had 46 (45%) applied patents. It means that the spinout companies had attracted more investment than those of startup companies. More importantly, 57 patents were commercialized by the small-medium enterprises (SMEs), 29 patents were commercialized by the other spinout companies, and 28 patents were commercialized by the big corporates in Turkey.

Consequently, this research has clearly showed that the academic studies at the universities has become important and transformed into innovation. Most of the academic based spinout companies have been playing important roles in the innovation-based ecosystems. Additionally, the patent applications as the intellectual property, helped them to become well known by the industries while attracting investments and commercialization. Furthermore, the university-industry partnership even could be much better by helping them to develop together the patents that solve the industries’ urgent problems. For that reason, the role of the governments, including the local governments and their financial capacities support them to grow exponentially. Most of the higher education institutions' innovation management strategies should be revised and focussed on the development of the innovation based spinouts of the academic studies. For that reason, the technology transfer offices (TTOs) are the main centers to create such spinout companies by increasing the number of the patents which solve the problems of the different industries. In these involvements, the reverse engineering methodologies and value preposition design should be encouraged to engage to the global economies.

Keywords:

Higher Education, Universities, Startups, Spinouts, Innovation Management, Technology Transfer, Patents, Intellectual Property, University Industry Partnership.