The relationship between origin and performance of innovative start-ups: the role of technological knowledge at founding

According to the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship (KSTE), the majority of innovative start-ups take advantage of the knowledge originated in incumbent firms or universities. However, little is known on how innovative start-ups’ heterogeneous originating contexts affect their performance differences at founding. To address this gap, we complement the KSTE with the resource-based view of the firm to hypothesize how the origin of innovative start-ups affects their initial technological knowledge and, in turn, performance at founding. We test the model using a sample of 338 innovative start-ups. Our results show that innovative start-ups that originated from university report a performance advantage since, right from their origin, their technological knowledge displays a broad scope and higher levels of newness.