Gil Avnimelech

Ono Academic College | ONO · Faculty of Management

Research Summary The literature on startup accelerators uncovers multiple factors associated with accelerators’ advantages. Yet, we have a limited understanding of the relative magnitude of these factors. We ask: Are accelerators akin to breweries, where quality is mainly a function of the institution of origin (i.e., brewery for beer, accelerator...

Over the past fifteen years, the startup accelerator sector has emerged as a vital component in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, offering structured support to novice entrepreneurs. This study explores the impact of mentorship within accelerators, shedding light on the critical role mentors play in the success of early-stage entrepreneurs. Utilizing...

Literature on the effect of religion and religiosity on corruption has failed to distinguish between direct and mediated effect and to determine the different roles of two alternative mediation channels—the personal versus the cultural channel. Using a data set of 102 countries, we found that hierarchical religions have significant positive associa...

Despite progress in women’s education attainment and employment, the gender gap in entrepreneurship remains pervasive worldwide, driven by discriminatory practices and social exclusion embedded in cultural norms. This study investigates the potential influence of religion on the gender gap in entrepreneurship and the labor market, using a unique da...

This study was driven by an initial finding that female founders' participation rate in Israeli accelerators is significantly higher (15.3 %) than their participation rate in the. Israeli startup sector (7.4 %). Linking accelerators' design to the known barriers to female entrepreneurship, we examined how accelerators may enhance female entrepreneu...

This study was driven by an initial finding that female founders' participation rate in Israeli accelerators is significantly higher (15.3 %) than their participation rate in the. Israeli startup sector (7.4 %). Linking accelerators' design to the known barriers to female entrepreneurship, we examined how accelerators may enhance female entrepreneu...

This research presents a theoretical model and examines it empirically to associate attachment orientations with various types of entrepreneurs. The results show clear evidence that attachment orientations not only predict an adult’s tendency to become an entrepreneur but also the type of entrepreneur he will become. Specifically, the results show...

International Business Ethics and Growth Opportunities presents the necessary methods and resources for managers and directors to be successful in leading their corporations in a responsible and morally conscious manner. Examining the dangers of unethical behavior, this book provides the strategies and tools for proper management to encourage compa...

This paper examines the cross-university variation in spin-off activity by faculty members from 124 US academic institutions, using a unique database including data on founders of both formal and informal spin-offs. Accordingly, the rate of spawning founders is positively affected by the quality of the institution and its departments, the R&D expen...

There is a consensus that corruption may result in high societal costs. A growing body of research reveals the negative effects of corruption on a variety of economic indicators. This chapter presents a literature review on the impact of corruption on entrepreneurship. It allows us to suggest that one of the transition channels through which corrup...

There is a consensus that corruption may result in high societal costs. A growing body of research reveals the negative effects of corruption on a variety of economic indicators. This chapter presents a literature review on the impact of corruption on entrepreneurship. It allows us to suggest that one of the transition channels through which corrup...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the relationship between corruption and productive entrepreneurship in general and whether it depends on countries’ specific characteristics in particular. Design/methodology/approach – The authors used a unique data set of entrepreneurial activity within 176 countries, collected from the professi...

This article focuses on the impact of religious institutions on entrepreneurship. We find clear evidence that different religious institutions have a significantly different impact on the tendency to become an entrepreneur. Our article makes important contributions to the research of both religion and entrepreneurship. First, it proposes empirical...

There is a consensus that corruption may result in high societal costs. A growing body of research reveals the negative effects of corruption on a variety of economic indicators. This chapter presents a literature review on the impact of corruption on entrepreneurship. It allows us to suggest that one of the transition channels through which corrup...

This chapter reviews the topic of immigration and entrepreneurship.It presents a literature review of the economic impact of immigration on both host and origin countries and discusses the influence of immigration and the level of host country innovation. The main part of the review is an in-depth analysis of different aspects that influence the im...

This special issue reflects on innovation and industrial policy from the premise that economic growth can be based on the permanent transformation of an economic system via the emergence and/or transformation of multi-agent structures and their inherent competences and knowledge base. The process of emergence or transformation is conceived as being...

This paper analyses the development of biotechnology clusters in North Carolina (NC) and Israel. In both NC and Israel, when the biotechnology was identified as a potential strategic priority, the framework conditions were suitable for successful policy-targeting. NC presents a case of a successful transition from a traditional manufacturing econom...

This article focuses on the impact of religious institutions on entrepreneurship. We find clear evidence that different religious institutions have a significantly different impact on the tendency to become an entrepreneur. Our article makes important contributions to the research of both religion and entrepreneurship. First, it proposes empirical...

Este trabajo da cuenta del surgimiento y desarrollo de una Industria de Capital de Riesgo en Israel y del rol que ésta jugó en el crecimiento exitoso reciente del cluster de alta tecnología de Israel. Discute el proceso coevolutivo y dinámico que involucra al sector comercial, políticas de tecnología, capitalistas de riesgo, compañías individuales...

This article describes the events and processes that led to the development of the Israeli high tech cluster. Understanding the Israeli cluster is important because Israel is probably the most successful example of replication of the Silicon Valley model outside of North America. It explains the development of multiple factors, including sophistica...

The objective of this paper is to bring new evidence to the analysis of corporate spawning. We assess the degree to which the level of entrepreneurial spawning is linked to corporate, local establishment and regional attributes. After controlling for firm size and age, spawning is found to be a function of firm productivity and innovativeness. Whil...

* Thanks to Josh Lerner for his extensive comments and suggestions on a previous draft, and to Martin Kenney with whom we have worked on a joint project, for illuminating us on the specifics of the evolution of the US VC industry. We also thank Vivian Walsh, Martin Fransman and Joel West for specific comments. This project also owes to many other r...

This paper examines the spawning of new company founders' from 124 leading U.S. academic institutions, using a unique database. We examine both local and non-local spin-offs of academic faculty members. Accordingly, the rate of spawning is positively affected by the institution quality, the strength of the local entrepreneurial cluster in the regio...

When compared to the U.S. and Israel, the weak venture capital (VC) markets and VC policy in Europe up to the early 2000s stimulated two alternative streams of research. A majority view, which we term traditional, focuses on the role of VC in overcoming market failure in the financing of innovative ventures. The policy recommendations emerging from...

Despite many attempts to develop high-impact VC policies, most VC markets in Europe are still underdeveloped. Many of these policies were based on 'traditional' (Rosiello et al 2009) VC policy involve a mix of monetary incentives and institutional changes. In this paper, we present an alternative evolutionary VC policy, which is based on a dynamic...

This paper presents the results and policy implications of a study that examined the spawning of founders who had previously been employed at large corporations. We found that spawning of founders is positively associated with the parent companies' productivity, innovativeness, and headquarter location. Furthermore, we found that the spin-off per e...

Despite many attempts to develop high-impact venture capital (VC) policies, most VC markets in Europe are still underdeveloped. Many of these policies were based on ‘traditional’ (Rosiello et al, 2009) VC policy involving a mix of monetary incentives and institutional changes. In this article, we present an alternative evolutionary VC policy, which...

This article deals with the penetration of Venture Capital (VC) industry to a new geographical market and the changes that took place during its transition from the growth to the mature stage of development. We suggest that when VC industry enters a new geographical market, it will initially include very few, but extremely innovative agents. As the...

This paper deals with a policy instrument supporting the emergence of VC industries. It is based on the Israeli experience with the Yozma program, which triggered the creation of the VC industry. This program dealt with specific system failures of the entrepreneurship process the early stage equity gap and the lack of complementary assets and skill...

Evolutionary Targeting is a dynamic, systems-evolutionary policy perspective which focuses on triggering, re-enforcing and sustaining market-led evolutionary processes of emergence of Multiagent Structures (industries, clusters, markets, etc). A major aspect is leveraging existing successes in firms to promote emergence of such structures. This req...

The paper presents a generic, three-phase innovation and technology policy (ITP) model which, in a number of contexts, could lead to the successful rise of venture capital (VC) or related equity-based support and finance systems for innovative SMEs both in high- and non-high-tech sectors. There has been increasing recognition that such systems coul...

This paper presents a five-phase innovation and technology policy (ITP) profile based on the Israeli experience of the last four decades. This paper adds two additional phases to a previous paper. This ITP profile refers only to one specific start-up-oriented plan of action out of a multi-pronged strategy for innovation-based economic development....

This study deals with policy instruments supporting high-tech start-up activity. It is based on the Israeli experience with two specific government programmes: Yozma, which triggered the emergence of the venture capital industry, and the technological incubators programme. These programmes had significant impact on the development of the high-tech...

This paper presents a five-phase innovation and technology policy (ITP) profile based on the Israeli experience of the last four decades. This paper adds two additional phases to a previous paper (Avnimelech & Teubal 2006b). This ITP profile refers only to one specific startup-oriented plan of action out of a multi-pronged strategy for innovation-b...

This paper presents an industry life cycle model of venture capital (VC) and associated startup-intensive high-tech clusters based on the Israeli experience of the last 35 years. Throughout, VC is considered as a new industry, which, when successful, traverses five phases: background conditions, pre-emergence, emergence, restructuring and consolida...

This chapter documents the emergence of the Israeli venture capital (VC) industry. The process is divided into three phases that spread out over three decades and it is also a vital part of Israel's innovation and technology policy. There was a deliberate policy that targeted VC - besides the importance of bringing in foreign expertise at an early...

This research is an exploratory study that analyzes various VC agents. It presents characteristics, investment patterns and performances of such agents in the Israeli VC market. Ten categories of investors were identified in the Israeli VC market, which are: domestic and Foreign VCs and CVCs, Investment Companies, Business Angels, Technological Inc...

The development of Venture Capital in Israel during 1993-2000 is an example of policy-led industry emergence. The Israeli targeted policy adapted to trigger Venture Capital emergence is an example of successful infant industry policy implemented at the prime of the Globalization process of capital markets for startup firms. This policy stands on it...

Through a microeconomic analysis of companies in Israel? Venture Capital (vc) industry this paper aims to contribute to the discussion of targeted policies directed to the emergence of new industries, particularly but not only Venture Capital and High Tech industries. It integrates a firm-level dimension to previous work on vc Emergence which was w...

During the growth phase of every venture capita (VC) business cycle, it seems as though both local and national governments in various countries initiate policies aimed at establishing VC industries as part of a high-technology economic development strategy. It is remarkable how each time there seems to be a proliferation of ill-advised policies th...

This paper provides an account of the emergence and development of a Venture Capital Industry in Israel, and the role it played in the recent successful growth of Israel's high tech cluster.The paper focuses on Israel's Venture Capital Industry, its emergence and operation during the 90s, in which period the number of VC Funds increased from 2 to o...

This chapter has two objectives: first an analysis of the evolution of Israel’s high-tech sector and cluster over the past thirty years to identify aspects of Israel’s IT high-tech experience of the 1990s which may be useful in assessing the prospects of India’s IT high-tech sector during this decade; the second to suggest policy directions or poli...

This paper deals with a major challenge of globalisation to national innovation systems of skill-intensive peripheral economies: acquisitions of high-tech start-up companies by foreign multinational companies. Through a detailed microeconomic analysis both of successful company growth profiles and of post-acquisition patterns, the paper analyses po...

This article analyses aspects of high-tech cluster emergence in Israel during the 1990s with focuses on the data security software industry and on strategies of very successful companies dominating such an industry. Most of the industry is concentrated in Tel Aviv and close-by Hertzliya and to a lesser extent Haifa and Jerusalem. It starts by chara...

This paper examines the spawning of new company founders' from large corporations, using a unique database on nested entrepreneurs. Spawning is a function of firm productivity and innovativeness, after controlling for firm size and age. The number of founders also varies predictably by sector and sub-sectors according to ease of entry (capital requ...

This research analyzes seven types of VC agents. It presents characteristics and performances of such agents in Israel. The empirical part of the paper, which is based on a sample of 2,464 Israeli high tech firms created during the years 1991-2000, presents the investment patterns and success rates of those agents. The main findings are that foreig...

Since its inception, the venture capital industry has experienced cycles. During the growth phase of each venture capital (VC) business cycle, local and national governments in various countries initiate policies aimed at establishing VC industries as part of an economic development strategy. Invariably, there is a proliferation of ill-advised poli...

This article deals with the process of penetration and development of a VC industry to a new geographical market, based on the Israeli case. We analyze the changes that have occurred in the Israeli VC market since its emergent stage and identify changes in the VC market structure, in the stages of investments, and in characteristics of exits. Israe...

Abstract Success in developing ,a Venture ,Capital industry may ,require adopting ,an evolutionary- systemic perspective not only of the processes involved before and during VC emergence,but also of policy-business sector co-evolution. Wesuggest,that the main obstacles in developing ,a significant high quality VC industry are

We compare some of the policies that have been attempted in Europe (UK/Scotland) and Israel over the past fifteen years to elaborate a new Systems Evolutionary (SE) framework for rethinking VC policy and related ITP. We argue that this perspective is useful for both real world (‘positive’) analysis and policy (‘normative’) analys is. Our SE framewo...

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009 This presentation was part of the session : Globalization of Science and Innovation The economic success of well-known innovative industrial clusters such as Silicon Valley and Route 128 has fostered attempts to transform local economies to successful industrial clusters (Feldman, 2001; Feldm...