Abstract
The interest about Research spin-offs (RSOs) has constantly increased since the last fifteen years on average, as their number is augmenting all over Europe and, consequently, several academic debates about the effective success, convincing strategy, and real performance of this peculiar kind of start-up company are open and arouse tricky questions. In addition, following the Internet revolution and globalization, nowadays we are assisting to the rising of high-growth firms, gazelles, “unicorns” and other kinds of companies that go beyond the traditional (old) vision of doing business. Moreover, open innovation, lean start-up and design thinking are at present some representative emerging strategies for doing business. Notwithstanding, in this fast-changing scenario and despite the growing relevance for companies of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and digital technologies, the role and the features of RSOs specifically providing digital products/services are still unexplored. In this paper, we leverage on a multiple case study analysis of four Italian digital RSOs to highlight differences and similarities with non-digital RSOs, their peculiarities in terms of drivers that foster their creation (as the role of the universities or the location issues), or, in terms of potential value creation, the successful competitive strategies that digital RSOs pursue.