Chapter 21 The role of academic spin-offs in connecting local knowledge Guido Capaldo, Luca Iandoli, Mario Raffa, and Giuseppe Zollo 21.1 Introduction: the role of academic spin-offs for local development in less developed areas Geographical areas with a consistent delay in development are characterized by a set of extremely weak links among the places where technical and scientific knowledge are produced, i.e. Universities, Research Centres, innovative large companies, etc., and the places where this knowledge might be utilized, i.e. local SMEs, local Public Administration, etc. (Corti, 1997). The traditional interventions of regional policy, which brought huge public investments towards weak areas in order to increase local production and employment, produced very poor results. The reasons for this failure lie in the logic of this kind of intervention characterized by a strong contrast with the principles of any model of endogenous development, according to which the underdevelopment of the Southern Italian Regions is mainly due to their inability to organize efficient relationships between the production sector and other key elements in the environment (Cappellin, 1996). This aspect is strongly pointed out in literature on small innovative firms: the development of small enterprises depends on the strength of the relationships which they are able to establish with the local available resources (OECD, 1982; Oakey, 1984; Rothwell, 1984; Raffa and Zollo, 1994). In particular, Less Developed Areas (LDAs) generally show a low degree of co-operative relationships between local Universities and small firms, despite the presence of endogenous resources and the availability of consistent public funds. Also in this case, the problem seems to regard more the connecting system than the presence of local qualified actors. F. Belussi et al. (eds.), The Technological Evolution of Industrial Districts © Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003