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Some universities are successfully involved in creating and developing new high-growth technology businesses while others struggle to do so. Clearly, the characteristics of the university and its environment are important, but explain only part of this variation. We explore how universities can promote new research-based businesses by suggesting that the nature of the support supplied depends on the demands of the spin-off firms. Adopting a demand side perspective, we seek to understand the challenges faced by new technology businesses and hence identify how universities can assist their start-up and development. From the academic entrepreneurship literature, we derive how universities can supply support for the development of firm competencies either directly or indirectly. The paper nuances the common conception of a university as one uniform entity in relation to spin-offs, and assesses the …