Abstract: The growth of university spin-offs, as the main way to the commercialization of R & D results, has become a hot issue in the domestic and international academics. Based on the perspective of role identity, the paper empirically examines the relationships among academic entrepreneur’s role, entrepreneurial orientation, university spin-offs’ performance by using the questionnaire survey and structural equation model. The empirical findings based on 203 university spin-offs in China suggest that academic entrepreneur’s role promotes the improvement of university spin-offs’ performance, and academic entrepreneur’s role has a positive effect on entrepreneurial orientation. Moreover, entrepreneurial orientation plays a partial mediating effect between academic entrepreneur’s role and university spin-offs’ performance.

Key words: academic entrepreneur’s role, entrepreneurial orientation, university spin-offs&rsquo, entrepreneurial performance