Third mission initiatives to promote female start-ups in Lazio: a multiple case study

Knowledge transfer involves the incorporation of knowledge into the practices of social and collective learning processes. This transfer occurs through social practices (Von Krogh, 2012) and both tacit and explicit means (Nonaka and Takenchi, 1995), involving both individual and organizational actors. Universities contribute to this process through the "Third Mission" (Centobelli et al., 2019; Paoloni et al., 2019; Croce et al., 2014), which includes scientific, technological, cultural transfer, and productive transformations of knowledge. This transformation finds its expression in the establishment of start-ups. However, despite efforts, a gender gap persists in the presence of women-led start-ups in Italy (Modaffari and della Corte, 2022; Modaffari and Manzo, 2022, 2023; Modaffari et al., 2023). Through a multi-case qualitative analysis, this study aims to investigate whether state universities in the Lazio region offer specific incentives for women -led start-ups and whether these incentives contribute to increasing the number of women-founded start- ups. The results highlight that, despite universities increasingly contributing to knowledge transfer, the gender gap remains strong. Despite the limitations imposed by the choice of universities to analyze, this study has the potential to enhance existing literature in gender studies and entrepreneurial universities, with particular emphasis on the domain of the third mission.