Laura Toschi

Laura Toschi
University of Bologna | UNIBO · Department of Management DiSA

Professor

About

64
Publications
12,760
Reads
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1,122
Citations
Introduction
I am a professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Bologna. I am currently working on clean-tech entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial finance and impact investing, entrepreneurship education, and the role of science and interdisciplinarity in technological development.

Publications

Publications (64)
Article
This study aims to advance the discussion around the linkages between public funding for scientific research and new technology development. We develop and test a methodology that matches patents to scientific publications, the latter of which stemming from publicly funded research. We specifically focus on projects that were funded by the European...
Article
The EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey and the EIF Venture Capital Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This publication is based on the results of the 2023 EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey, conducted by the EIF. The pap...
Article
Full-text available
This paper investigates the contribution of the B Corp movement in Europe to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) compared with non‐B Corps. B Corp certification aims to identify organisations that utilise business as ‘a force for good’, but there is limited empirical evidence on how effectively certified organisations translate their pro...
Article
The EIF VC Survey and the EIF Private Equity Mid-Market Survey (the largest combined regular survey exercises among General Partners on a pan-European level) provide an opportunity to retrieve unique market insights. This publication is based on the results of the 2023 VC Survey, conducted by the EIF with the support of Invest Europe. The paper foc...
Article
A great debate around development scenarios has come to define conversations around the economy and the environment, two dimensions that struggle to find a proper balance. In this paper we apply unconditional growth model analyses to a new and unique dataset of European regions between 2008 and 2016 and identify four development scenarios - green g...
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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented social and economic crisis, not least for hybrid organisations, as they must manage the tension arising from their dual mission to create social and economic value. Building on a theoretical framework for hybrid tension, our work contextualises how tensions emerge and are managed in hybrid organisat...
Article
Innovators are creative people who can conjure the groundbreaking ideas that represent the main engine of innovative organizations. Past research has extensively investigated who innovators are and how they behave in work-related activities. In this paper, we suggest that it is necessary to analyze how innovators behave in other contexts, such as i...
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Benefit corporations (BCs) are profit‐with‐purpose organizations regulated by a legal framework for establishing explicit commitments in terms of multi‐stakeholder governance and accountability structures. We comprehensively analyze the theoretical alignment of four concepts (ownership, mission, governance, and accountability) to explain the legal...
Preprint
Full-text available
Innovators are creative people who can conjure the ground-breaking ideas that represent the main engine of innovative organizations. Past research has extensively investigated who innovators are and how they behave in work-related activities. In this paper, we suggest that it is necessary to analyze how innovators behave in other contexts, such as...
Article
Full-text available
Plain English Summary Using the Semantic Brand Score and other innovative methods and tools of text mining and social network analysis, we analyzed the website communication of 195 social impact venture capitalists (SIVCs). We investigate what language reveals about their identity by introducing two dimensions that measure the strength of their soc...
Article
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Extant theory suggests that candidates with an unfocused identity—those spanning different categories—suffer from a valuation penalty because evaluators are confused by their profile and concerned they lack the required skills. We argue that unfocused candidates may be penalized for another reason; they threaten established social boundaries. This...
Article
Technologies can play an important role in developing and scaling social innovations, thanks to their ability to reach and mobilise communities of people, use resources more effectively, and provide fast and broad responses to social needs. Seeing this potential, Technology Social Ventures have arisen as a form of social enterprises that employ tec...
Article
Governments and public agencies are increasingly keen to support the translation of scientific discoveries into commercial and societal applications through science valorisation funding, as a way to enhance progress and inclusive growth. In this paper, we use grant-level data from the European Research Council Proof-of-Concept (PoC) programme, in o...
Article
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The dataset has been developed within the framework of the EU EIT-Climate Kic Flagship Project “Re -Industrialise”and it includes data of Carbon Emission Intensity (CEI) from indus- trial sources for the European Regions. CEI is considered as a proxy for analysing the Industrial Sustainability Transition pathways and is calculated as the ratio betw...
Article
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In the last ten years, we have witnessed a proliferation of investors claiming blended value strategies, i.e., pursuing both economic and social returns in their investments. Aside from this rush for self-selecting in a blended value finance context, we still do not know to what extent the investors’ claims actually reflect investment decisions. Ev...
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Sustainability Transitions (ST) is a complex phenomenon, encompassing environmental, societal and economic aspects. Its study requires a proper investigation, with the identification of a robust indicator and the definition of a suitable method of analysis. To identify the most informative geographical boundaries for analysing ST pathways, we consi...
Article
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Universities show an increasing commitment to stimulate science- and technology-based entrepreneurship with the aim of contributing to societal and economic development. The provision of science and technology entrepreneurship education (STEE) and the operation of technology transfer offices (TTOs) share the objective of improving university capabi...
Article
The dataset has been developed within the framework of the EU EIT-Climate Kic Flagship Project “Re-Industrialise” and it includes data of Carbon Emission Intensity (CEI) from industrial sources for the European Regions. CEI is considered as a proxy for analysing the Industrial Sustainability Transition pathways and is calculated as the ratio betwee...
Article
Full-text available
The journey towards sustainability has become paramount to industry, government and research. To date, the main contributions have proposed valuable theoretical models to study the transitions to sustainability. However , a quantitative examination of the phenomenon is still limited. In this paper, we exploit a multilevel-growth model to empiricall...
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A growing stream of the academic literature has investigated the factors that hamper the participation of women researchers in patenting and commercialization activities; however, limited research has examined the policies that address these forms of the gender gap. In this paper, we explore whether the ownership arrangements of university patents...
Article
In accreditation, candidates are evaluated against a standard for being admitted to a closed category, such as a profession or an organizational grouping. Accreditors typically have to simultaneously judge a candidate’s performance record and fit with the category. While prior work suggests that higher performing candidates may get away with lower...
Article
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Entrepreneurship research emphasizes the importance of the individual entrepreneur in both venture creation and growth. However, theory and practice suggest that the vast majority of new ventures are now team-based, and teams play a key role in venture success. As the scholarly interest in this topic has substantially grown in the recent years, the...
Chapter
New ventures do not have access to the same financial resources as larger firms, for the presence of the so-called “funding gap”. Such a barrier can be particularly pronounced for university startups, given their knowledge- and technology-based nature. To address this market failure, universities (often in collaboration with public and/or private p...
Article
Previous research has claimed that universities can enhance the effectiveness of knowledge transfer activities by establishing a clear strategic goal and aligning all their activities towards that direction. To shed new light on this issue, in this paper we explore the determinants of universities' strategic choices in the field of knowledge transf...
Chapter
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Digital technologies and their applications are systematically altering established practices and making new ones emerge in different realms of society. Research in social sciences in general and management in particular is no exception, and several examples that span a variety of fields are coming into the spotlight not only from scholarly communi...
Article
The limited availability of private funding sources to support technology transfer activities represents a major barrier to the effective commercialization of university technologies. This article analyzes the key determinants of the activation of financial instruments by universities—such as seed funds and proof-of-concept programs—to address such...
Article
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University–industry technology transfer (TT) has become increasingly institutionalized and is supported by numerous reforms and initiatives at the national, regional and university levels. Most countries have implemented a policy mix involving a range of instruments to support the commercialization of research. Still, there is no systematic evidenc...
Article
This study analyses the characteristics of the proof-of-concept (POC) programmes initiated by university and public research organisations in Europe, as a mechanism to address funding gaps and improve the transfer of research-based inventions to markets. We contribute to the literature on investment readiness of new ventures and on financing techno...
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This article studies the extent to which corporate entrepreneurial intentions are enacted differently by academic and non-academic entrepreneurs. Using constructs from cognitive research and exploiting the theory of institutional logics, we observe that academic entrepreneurs, notwithstanding their engagement in entrepreneurship, still implement th...
Article
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This work investigates the role of university and PRO-oriented seed funds (USFs)—VC funds with an explicit mission to make investments in academic spin-offs and support technology transfer—as instruments for addressing funding gaps and facilitating the commercialization of academic technologies. We first offer an overview of USFs in Europe, highlig...
Article
Corporate reputation has been widely considered an important intangible asset that firms can use for improving their levels of performance. Previous works mainly focused their attention on large established firms and on the relationship between reputation and consumers’ behavior. Based on a sample of 200 UK startups operating in the micro and nanot...
Article
Full-text available
This work investigates the role of university and PRO-oriented seed funds (i.e. USFs), namely VC funds with an explicit mission to make investments in academic spin-offs, as instruments to address the funding gap. We first offer an overview on USFs in Europe highlighting their heterogeneity and main characteristics. Second, we exploit an unique dat...
Article
This paper provides theoretical and empirical contributions on how patent scope varies over time and by type of applicants in the initial phases of an emerging technology. We refer to the literature on technology life-cycles and on appropriability regimes in order to study the evolution of patent scope – as measured by the number of claims – in the...
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This paper analyzes the importance given by Venture Capital firms (VCs) to the patent portfolios of start-up companies in their financing decisions. In particular, the contributions presented are twofold. First, we determine whether the amount of VC financing is associated with three elements related to technological portfolios: number of patent, p...
Article
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In this article, we analyze whether venture capital (VC) firms have a bias against investment in academic spin-offs based on empirical evidence from the micro- and nanotechnology sector in the UK. We also investigate the characteristics of academic spin-offs to capture the differences in their ability to attract VC funding. Finally, we examine whet...
Article
Over the last two decades, many governments around the world have implemented programmes to mobilize venture capital (VC) in support of new and innovative firms. In this paper, we analyze whether and how the impact of publicly-supported VC funds varies between high-tech and low-tech regions, when compared to private VC funds. Our analyses on a samp...
Article
This paper uses data on 221 Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) funds created by 186 U.S. public firms during the period 1996–2006 to examine the presence of complementarity/substitution between corporate diversification and CVC fund diversification as different forms of exploration. Our results suggest that corporations undertake CVC investments to su...
Article
There is a growing trend by established firms to use a multitude of External Corporate Venturing (ECV) mechanisms (alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, acquisitions, licensing agreements and investments in corporate venture capital) to acquire external innovations. In this paper, we develop a framework within which firms choose ECV mechanisms t...
Article
The article addresses the question of how the patent portfolios of startup companies are evaluated by venture capital firms (VCs). Evidence indicates that VCs often do assess these values accurately. Studies are cited which demonstrate that VC financing and valuation correlate with patent rates and protection. The question of whether the industry a...
Article
This paper analyzes how VC firms evaluate the patent portfolios of start-up companies in their financing decisions. On one hand, we determine whether the amount of VCs' financing is associated with three dimensions related to technological portfolios: patent counts, patent scope and the number of core technology patents. On the other hand, we exami...
Article
This paper aims at shedding further light on the controversial impact of M&As on the value creation perceived by investors, as the short-term market performance of the firms involved. 17 event studies are examined by following a meta-analytical procedure. The unit of analysis is originally assumed as the event window within each study, yielding a t...
Article
In this paper, we provide original empirical evidence, based on a sample of 255 new ventures operating in the micro and nanotechnology (MNT) sector in the United Kingdom, on the ability of academic spin-offs to attract venture capital financing. We analyze whether venture capitalists have a bias against investing in academic spin-offs due to high l...
Article
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This paper enlarges the scope of inter-organizational learning and strategic renewal research to the ongoing debate on whether companies should mainly try to exploit current trajectories rather than explore new opportunities. Scholars studying exploration and exploitation have been highlighting for long the essential trade-offs firms make in undert...
Article
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We provide empirical evidence to resolve the dilemma about the existence of a VCs bias against investments in academic spin-offs. We also investigate the nature of university spin-offs to capture the heterogeneity at the base of differences in their ability to attract VC funding. Finally, we examine whether their valuation varies between private an...
Article
This Doctoral Dissertation is triggered by an emergent trend: firms are increasingly referring to investments in corporate venture capital (CVC) as means to create new competencies and foster the search for competitive advantage through the use of external resources. CVC is generally defined as the practice by non-financial firms of placing equity...

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