Breeding the Winning Unicorn: Spin-Offs and Technology Transfer in the US, Italy, and the UK

Abstract The legal frameworks governing academic spin-offs and technology transfer (‘TT’) have become a central element in assessing the capacity of entrepreneurial universities to contribute to innovation-driven growth. This article provides a comparative examination of the regulatory approaches adopted in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom. A first set of findings concerns the structural divergence between systems. The US model, grounded in the Bayh-Dole Act, has established a coherent and predictable regime for allocating intellectual property rights, incentivizing public-private collaboration, and enabling universities to develop effective TT practices. The UK has progressively embraced similar mechanisms, achieving a relatively mature environment for academic entrepreneurship. By contrast, the Italian framework remains fragmented and less conducive to the development of scalable spin-offs, notwithstanding recent institutional efforts to strengthen TT offices and support research valorization. A further point of analysis involves the governance of conflicts of interest arising from dual academic-entrepreneurial roles. These issues are addressed through heterogeneous internal regulations, whose effectiveness varies considerably across systems and has direct implications for the credibility and operability of TT processes. Overall, the comparative assessment underscores that the coherence, accessibility, and institutional robustness of TT regulation are decisive factors for the emergence of university-born scale-ups and unicorns. The article therefore poses a decisive question: what breakthroughs – and what high-growth ventures – are being lost when legal and institutional frameworks are not yet configured to let scientific excellence evolve into global entrepreneurial success?