The Impact of an Entrepreneur's Knowledge - A Case of Nokia's Spinoff

Sammanfattning: In recent years the study of entrepreneurial spinoffs has focused on how knowledge spillover leads to new knowledge and entrepreneurial activity. This study aims to explore the effect of a founder’s knowledge inherited from an incumbent parent company in the formation of a spinoff in the ICT sector. As a theoretical framework, the study uses An Absorptive Capacity Theory of Knowledge Spillover Entrepreneurship (Qian and Acs, 2013). Using a qualitative approach through interviews with the founder of the spinoff, this study aims to strengthen the empirical validity of these theories in a single setting. The proposed findings are strongly in line with the theory, but a certain aspect considering the help from a parent company proposes a possibility to modify the framework into a particularized framework that can be implicated to various spinoffs globally. Thus, the findings suggest that entrepreneurial activity deriving through absorptive capacity and inherited knowledge is affected by the contributions from the parent company.