  One of the most problematic aspects in the creation of spin-offs by
university personnel concerns the relationship between entrepreneurial activity
and research activity by researcher-entrepreneurs. The literature has expressed
varying and opposing views as to the nature of the relationship but very little
has been produced to empirically legitimate one position or another. The
present work proposes to address this shortcoming by exploring the relationship
existing between academic spin-off generation and the research performance of
enterprise founders. The study investigates whether, and to what extent,
scientific performance by academic entrepreneurs is different than that of
their colleagues, and if the involvement in entrepreneurial activity has an
influence on the individual's research activity. The research questions are
answered by considering all spin-offs generated by Italian universities over
the period 2001-2008 and evaluating, through a bibliometric approach, the
scientific performance of founders relative to that of their colleagues who
carry out research in the same field. The data show better scientific
performance by the researcher-entrepreneurs than that of their colleagues and
in addition, although there are some variations across fields, the creation of
a spin-off does not seem, on average, to have negative effects on the
scientific performance of the founders.
