Innovation, creativity and reward practices in academic spin-offs: The case of the IST Spin-off Community

This article aims to study the role of reward practices in fostering the creativity process and the innovation performance of academic spin-offs. We start from the extant literature on the promotion of creativity and innovation in companies, stressing the role of rewards and other human resources management (HRM) practices. Then we conduct empirical research using purposely collected data on eighteen spin-off companies, whose parent organization is Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), a Portuguese engineering school. The results indicate that reward practices are mainly associated with the individual components of creativity (skills and processes) and that its positive effect on innovation is usually moderated by other practices of HRM, namely selection, teamwork, training and performance appraisal.