IIT Bombay Phd Program Structure

Doctoral Program Structure

The School offers a program leading to the PhD degree in all areas of management. Structure of the Doctoral program in SJMSOM is as mentioned below. 1)     The Ph.D program in SJMSOM consists of two phases - 1) Course work 2) Research Work. 2)     For Non-M.B.A background, the candidate is required to complete a minimum of 52 credits. 3)     For M.B.A background, the candidate is required to complete a minimum of 40 credits. 4)     There are 3 compulsory courses irrespective of the background which needs to be completed before registering for Ph.D 1)     Credit Seminar (4 credits). At most 2 credit seminars can be presented. 2)     Research Methodology course(6 credits) 3)     Communication course (An Institute level course with no credits) After the successful completion of course work, the registration to Ph.D is done and the phase 2 of research work starts.

 

IIT B SOM PHD Students

Research Proposal - Phd - IIT Bombay

Phd Research Proposal – submitted by Akash Suresh Mavle, BE, Master of Management(IIT Bombay), akashmavle@gmail.com, Cell: 968 989 9815

1.     Basic Motivation / Importance of Area

Incubators in Universities as well as in private R & D organizations have created huge impact in last 30 years, starting first in US and then moving across geographies like Europe, Asia and so on.  Incubators generally take various names like TBI, Science Parks, Innovation Center and S & T Parks. For this proposal will not differentiate them unless it is done explicitly.

Incubators have become a very good linkage vehicle for universities and R & D organizations to create a live link between their applied research and industry. This has also helped incubator parent organizations to attract funds, create a positive image, show economic development in their local economic areas and help create jobs.

Some of the clear contribution areas where Incubators have delivered are:

a.       They have added to the local economic activity by way of creating new high-tech companies.

b.      They have helped universities and R & D organizations (these are the parent organization for most of the incubators) by way of Technology Commercialization, by way of achieving their long terms goals of knowledge creation, dissemination and Intellectual Property commercialization.

c.       Incubators have created some of the success stories of research commercialization, technology commercialization

d.      Incubators have also become a policy tool for governments and universities to create companies who can effectively use their research, which otherwise would have been available at a very high price for any startup to afford.

e.      Successful companies out of incubators have become source of inspiration for lot of entrepreneurs to follow them by incubating into the same incubator/institution.

f.        Some of the Governments (including India, since May 2009) have allowed the parent organization to own the equity into the tenant companies in order to achieve higher return from their investment after the firm graduates out of incubator or raises capital for growth.

In summary, I feel that Incubators have been one of the tools to foster innovation, achieve growth by way of helping start high-technology firms,   achieve technology commercialization and improve overall appeal and attractiveness of Parent University or R & D organization.  On the other hand Incubator is an effective tool for Governments and their science and technology departments to create a country-wide infrastructure to create high-tech startups and help technology commercialization

I feel that although there has been huge activity in terms of creation of Incubators in advance countries, incubators have been a very recent phenomenon in India. There is little empirical study available on their performance; on how do they set objectives and how do they achieve some of their stated goals. I plan to feel that gap by posing some of the questions which will follow in subsequent sections.

2.     State of Current Knowledge/Research

High Tech firms coming out of Research organizations help foster economic growth in local economies. This has been used an effective policy by US government extensively since 1980s. The same has been adopted gradually by the Asian economic powers (Korea and Taiwan) and in last few years this has become one of the priority areas in India by DSIR and DST to clearly promote the policy of helping Universities and R & D organizations to help setup Incubators.

Technology based incubators help reduce the risk of failures by the high-tech firms coming out to extend the work done in labs of the parent organization. Parent organization can be a University, R &D organization or a large private organization looking to create spin-offs from the technologies they have been creating in their labs.

Most of the comprehensive studies have looked various issues like Technology Commercialization, Linkages of firm and the parent organizations, incubators contribution to the main objectives of the parent university, performance frameworks and models for incubators.

There are four levels where broad research can be carried out to cover the ecosystems around incubators

a.       Policy Level: Looking at why governments invest in incubator policies and why they keep funds aside for incubators

b.      Incubator Organization Level:  At this level the parent organization’s motivation, goals and objectives of setting up incubator can be studied

c.       Incubator Level: Incubator itself has its own organization and priorities of incubators and their fit with the incubatee organization can be studied.

d.      Incubatee Firm Level: This is the lowest level where organization model can be studied, Essential characteristics of successful organizations can be studied.

These areas has been an important research area in US, Europe and Asia and researchers have looked at following research areas and questions in their empirical as well as description research works.

a.       Researchers have looked at Technology Commercialization(TC) happening in Incubators

b.      Knowledge flows from the Incubator to the incubatee firms and how they depend on the absorptive capacity of the company

c.       Role of innovation done at parent lab/university in the success of the incubatee firm’s competitive advantage

d.      Development of Performance Measurement framework for the incubators

e.      Creation of Incubator Evaluation Model

f.        Analysis of Technology Transfer Instances in TBI

g.       Study of firms by looking at their success and failures in incubators

h.      University’s contribution towards the regional economic development as well as commercialization of its own research

i.         Post-incubator performance of the companies

3.     Literature Search

Some of the research paper reviewed have been summarized in the excel sheet attached.

Smilor andGill (1,1986)have studied the use of Technology Business Incubators as a tool for Technology Commercialization. They have been pioneers in looking at this area in 1986.

F  Rothaermela , M Thursby(2, 2005) have looked at 79 firms incubated in Georgia Tech University’s incubator over 1998 to 2003 and analysed knowledge flows from University to Incubator. They have taken resource based view of firm to understand how absorptive capacity affects the knowledge flows to the firm. They conclude that absorpting capacity of the firm is an important characteristic in deciding the competitive advantage of the firm in market place.

Chung-jen Chen(3,2008) studied 122 high-tech companies in Taiwan. He has examined effects of technology commercialization, venture capital and incubator on venture performance based on resource view of the organization.  Some of the conclusions are as follows, 1. Organizational Resources, Innovative Capability positively impact TC competence (TC=Technology Commercialization) 2. TC relates positively to performance of the firm.  3. Incubator and Venture Capital supports moderate effects of technology commercialization on the performance of new ventures. 4. Study discusses mediating effects of TC and moderating effects of incubator and venture capital support on the venture performance 5. Innovative capability does not have direct effect on venture performance.

Anna Bergek, Charlotte Norrman(4, 2008) have examined 22 Swedish Incubators and created framework for incubator model. This model propose components namely Selection, Infrastructure, Business Support, Mediation, Graduation. Out of these only 3 of them are distinguishing components viz. Selection, Business Support and Mediation.

Phillip H. Phan , Donald S. Siegel and  Mike Wright(5, 2005) have studied literature available on science parks at 4 levels. Various secondary data sources of UK/US/Asia science/university and business incubators/conference papers have been used as data sources. The main contributions are: 1. Technological entrepreneurial value chain 2. Property based initiative perspective of the science parks 3. Ecological view of Science parks   and incubators.

 In summary they have achieved following:  1. Synthesis of findings and outlining of broader research agenda .2 Identification of numerous further research areas is also one of the contributions of this  research(see next column for more of them) 3. Need for inter-level linkages in analysis. Further research is proposed as follows: 1. What is the real need of science parks and incubators 2. Complementarities/substitutability of science parks and incubators with venture capital model of organization creation/growth 3. Study on more levels  of analysis beyond what is proposed in this paper.  4. Research on individual entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams

S Mian(6, 1997) has developed integrative framework for University Business Incubators performance. He has studied four 30-year or old US based facilities to create a framework.  The model has three performance dimensions which are included in the integrative framework: 1. Program sustainability and Growth 2. Firm's survival and growth  3. Contribution to the sponsoring university's mission

He further argues that comparative review of above four cases reveal that the Mian’s framework provides a flexible methodology to assess the performance of UTBIs. The article concludes with a set of elements identified for evaluating UTBIs under the aforementioned three performance dimensions providing measurement indicators. This framework seeks to provide conceptual clarity for those responsible for assessing UTB1 performance, directing their operations, or endeavoring to create them

Rhonda Philips(7, 2002) has studied various secondary data sources covering lot of TBI and BIs. This study differentiates between TBI and a pure BI. It also gives quantitative data on lot of incubators from secondary sources as well as data on the incubated firms. Study also looks at main objectives of TBI and how and to what extent they are achieved. Surprising finding of this research has been that the TBIs have not had high incidences of technology transfer incidences in spite of that being a stated goal before formation of TBI.

R. Grimaldi and A Grandi (8, 2005) studied 8 italian incubators. They argue that the variety of incubating organizations is driven by the evolution of companies’ requirements and needs, which encourage incubators to differentiate the range of services that they offer. Authors believe that differences in the way incubators run their businesses can be described by two main incubating models (Model 1 and Model 2), providing incubators with useful indications on how to position themselves strategically. Then they identify a list of incubator ‘characterizing’ variables to highlight the main differences between the four types of incubators and to describe the incubating models. Empirical evidence is provided on the two incubating models derived from case studies of eight Italian incubators. Rationale behind different incubating initiatives lies in the ability to target different kind of client companies, having different objectives and requirements

4.     My own planned research areas

My last 12 years have spent in starting up firms and growing them. I have been on board of few startups. I feel that this research will augment to my practical experience as technology entrepreneur a solid understanding of how incubators work and how do they add value to the tenant firm and local economy by way of Incubator model.

After doing literature search I have identified following areas to carry out my research:

a.       Broad area: Study of incubators(Technology Business Incubators, Science Parks, Science and Technology Parks, Innovation Centers, Advanced Technology Centers) in India , Motivation behind Incubators in US, Motivation behind Incubators in India(examples NSTEDB sponsored TBIs)

b.      Category Area and Research Questions

                                                               i.      Development of Framework to measure Performance of Incubators in India

                                                             ii.      Which Theories should form the basis of study of incubators, e.g. one of such theories could be Social Capital Theory.

                                                            iii.      Development of Framework for Incubators to understand the critical success factors for success of Incubatee firms.

                                                           iv.      Adoption of a very comprehensive known framework of Firm (tenant firm) from competitive advantage perspective.

                                                             v.      Place of Incubatee Firm in the value chain and its implications on success depending on the place in value chain

                                                           vi.      Interaction and Linkages of Incubatee companies with other companies in incubator

                                                          vii.      Role of Cohesion between incubate companies in shaping their sustainability and competitive advantage

                                                        viii.      Attractiveness of incubatee companies to angel investors and venture capital firms

                                                           ix.      Role of Venture Capital firms in the competitive advantage of incubatee firms

                                                             x.      Study of TBI which is under a university which has Graduate Business School involvement to raise funds, provide shared services.( e.g SINE,  its technology as well as SJMSOM contributions)

                                                           xi.      Analysis of conflict of firm’s main aims(looking at best technologies) and incubator organization’s main aim(promote their own technologies/IP/know-how)

                                                          xii.      How linkages of incubatee firm with the parent organization affect their long-term performance

                                                        xiii.      Which factors increases the competitive advantage of the incubatee firm

5.     Bibliography

1. R. Smilor and M. Gill, The New Business Incubator: Linking Talent, Technology and Know-How. Lexington Books, MA, 1986.
2. Research Policy, Frank T. Rothaermela , University-incubator firm knowledge flows: assessing their impact on incubator firm performance, ,2 005, Marie Thursbyb, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30308-0520, USA Georgia Institute of Technology andNBER, USA
3. Technology Commercialization, incubator, venture capital and new venture performance

2008,Journal of Business Research, Chung-Jen Chen, Graduate Institute of Business Administration, College of Management, National Taiwan University, 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC

4. Incubator best practice: framework, 2008, Technovation, Anna Bergek, Charlotte Norrman, Department of Management and Engineering, Linko¨ping University, SE-581 83 Linko¨ping, Sweden
5. Science Parks and Incubators: Observations, Synthesis and Future Research, 2005, Journal of Business Venturing, Phillip H. Phana,,1, Donald S. Siegelb,1,2, Mike Wrightc,1,3 a Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute b Department of Economics, RPI, c Nottingham University Business School, UK
6. Assessing and managing University Technology Business Incubators- Integrative Framework , 1997, Journal of Business Venturing, Sarfaraz  Mian, State University of Newyork, Oswego
7. Technology Business Incubators: how effective as technology transfer mechanisms, Technology in Society. Rhonda G Philips, Center for Building Better Communities, Urban and Regional Planning Department, University of Florida.
8. Business Incubation and new Venture Creation: assessment of incubating models, 2005, Technovation.  Rossa Grimaldi and Alessandro Grandi, CILG Department of Management, University of Bologna, Italy

6.     Appendix A : Entity/Attribute List

Following is a list of all the entities and their capabilities/objectives/attributes which came across while doing the literature search

Entities	Capabilities/attributes/objectives
Firm	Absorptive Capacity, Performance, Graduation from Incubator, Competitive Advantage
TBI	Objectives, Funding, Directors/Managers,  Assessment Framework, Organization Design, Practices and Policies, GOALS(TT and TC),Best Practices in TBIs, Types(University, JV-Hybrid, Private), Form(for-profit, non-profit), Equity in Incubatee Company, Exit Policy in Years for Tenants
TBI Objectives	TT, TC, Research Commercialization, Economic Development, Local Economy stimulus, Job Creation, Generate Profitable Revenue stream from technology spin-offs
TBI Services	Labs and Equipments, Involvement of Faculty, Research Staff and Students, Access to Library, Office equipment and furniture, Access to Patents, Access to Know-how, Real Estate, Access to VC network, Access to Angel network, Access to Capital Raising, Access to Business Development Services, Clerical and Receptionist Services, Access to Mentors, Business Advisory Services, Legal and Patent Services,  Government Contract Assistance, Access and application of Govt/Semi- Government Grants, Tax and Audit Services, HR/Recruitment Support
TBI Performance Metrics	Number of firms graduated out of TBI successfully, Successful use of parent organisations(Univ or R&D org)research, Number of TTs done, Number of TCs done, Number of jobs created per firm/incubator, Profit generated in long term from the TC activity(e.g. Stanford generating profit from SUN/HP/Yahoo/Google), Survival Rate, Graduation and Leaving of TBI and difference between them
University/Research Org	Image, Labs and Equipment, Practices and Policies, Vision, Mutual Benefits, Linkages with UTBI, Basic Services Provided, Value-added Services Provided, Involvement of Faculty and Incentives to them, Involvement of Students
Mentors, Venture Capital Firms, Government, Entrepreneurs	Services Offered, Mission, Objectives, Management Expertise, Performance Framework
Economy	Average Job Creation per incubator, per firm, effect on local value chains and economy of TBI
Clients of the Firms and Incubators	Private Companies, R &D institutions

7.     Most Cited Journals

Following is list of Journals from where the initial papers have been looked at:

a.       Policy Research

b.      Journal of Business Research

c.       Journal of Business Venturing

d.      Management Science

e.      Journal of Management

f.        Strategic Management Journal

g.       Administrative Science Quarterly

h.      America Economic Review

i.         Journal of Industrial Organization

j.        Journal of Finance and Economics

8.     Glossary

a.       TBI: Technology Business Incubators

b.      UTBI: University Technology Business Incubators

c.       USTI: University Sponsored Technology Incubators