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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that the university context may partially determine the growth of university spin-offs (USOs), with a cross-national analysis and using an “interactionist” approach.Design/methodology/approach Two samples of USOs, from Spain and Italy (531 and 952 firms, respectively), were examined over the 2005-2013 period. Multilevel modelling was applied to empirically test the hypotheses.Findings The results confirmed that the university context is a critical and effective element for explaining USOs’ growth. The university context affected USOs’ growth only for the Spanish firms, while for the Italian spin-offs the evidence does not report a significant determining influence of the university context. This finding may be interpreted as the localization externalities, determined by the Spanish universities, have a more effective impact at firm level compared with those generated by the Italian universities.Research limitations/implications The paper provides evidence that the university context has a significant role in supporting USOs’ growth in Spain, but not in Italy. This finding, together with the fact that the Italian USOs showed lower growth rates over the period of analysis, may suggest that greater involvement by the Italian parent universities is needed to foster USOs’ growth. The main point to be underlined to decision makers is that policies aimed at fostering USOs need the active involvement of the parent university in the whole growth process of the nascent firm, rather than just in the USO creation process.Originality/value A multilevel approach provides both methodological and theoretical contributions to the study of USOs’ growth, which was adopted as an “interactionist” approach is recommended by literature. In addition, a cross-national approach allows for exploration of the actual effect of the university on the growth of USOs, taking into account international differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]