The fast response of academic spinoffs to unexpected societal and economic challenges. Lessons from the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis

The rapid emergence of the COVID‐19 crisis has challenged both private and public firms, requiring them to reshape their internal processes and external linkages in the fight against the virus, but also to survive the disrupting economic impact of the pandemic on their activities. Academic spinoffs have not been exempted from these dynamics. In this paper, we present and discuss a case study of an academic spinoff, Omnidermal, which has developed a new, efficient and easy‐to‐realize emergency life support machine for use in intensive and sub‐intensive care units. This case, apart from offering information on the best practices of how spinoffs may contribute socially to the fight against COVID‐19 and – more in general – against other exogenous shocks, also provides insights on their stages of development, evolution patterns and ability to define new solutions. The case shows that when the market needs are clear to a firm (as in the case of medical devices during the COVID‐19 crisis), the ‘legacy competences and practices’ of spinoffs (i.e., technical competences and work practices) can be fully exploited to compress the development time and to realize products demanded by the market. We also identify access to a network as being an essential boundary condition for this process. These results introduce an alternative scope for academic spinoffs. Given the ‘legacy competences and practices’ they are able to develop, they are ideal candidates to respond to the societal and economic challenges posed by a crisis over short periods of time. On the basis of these insights, we draw a series of implications for practitioners, policy makers and academics.