1. Knowledge-Based Start-ups and Entrepreneurship Policy

In the past decade, entrepreneurship policies aimed at encouraging entrepreneurial activities in general and policies that aim at supporting the formation of knowledgebased start-ups in particular have been implemented in many industrial economies. The strong interest in knowledge-based start-ups might be explained by the fact that in a global economy, the comparative advantage of developed, high labor cost countries has continuously shifted toward knowledge-based activities and innovation being the key to economic growth and employment. This development created a compelling argument in favor of policies in areas such as venture capital markets, knowledge commercialization, R&D skill-upgrading efforts, and clustering ( Audretsch et al. 2007) . Consequently, universities and research institutes gained attention from policymakers who developed policy instruments to invest in knowledge. In order to commercialize scientific knowledge, incumbent firms or knowledge-based start-ups must use that new knowledge and create new products, processes, or services.