The champion's human capital and its role throughout the USO's development

Abstract

This Master thesis will explore how the specific human capital of the champion contribute to the development of university spin-off. The framework used to describe the contribution is resource based theory, knowledge based theory and human capital theory. The development of the USO is illustrated in this master thesis by using stage models, mainly focusing on how the champion aid the USO to overcome the critical juncture in its development. The thesis consist of two articles, the first is a literature review of the research relevant to this study. The second article is an empirical study based on the FORNY database consisting of Norwegian start-ups. This empirical study focus on three things. First it explore if the champion of the USO in the opportunity framing phase affect the USO's ability to overcome the threshold of credibility. This is done in order to find out if the basis formed in the opportunity framing phase, has a significant effect on the USOs ability to overcome the credibility juncture. Second, it study how the human capital of the champion change from the opportunity framing phase to the threshold of credibility. The last thing that are researched is how the human capital of the champion changes when the USO overcome the threshold of credibility. The purpose of the last two parts are to see how the human capital change throughout the development of the USO.