Cognitive economics is the fruit of intense "trans-epistemic" communication involving heterogeneous disciplinary areas: its most tangible application can be found in the dialogues between science and enterprise and in the relationship between cognition and entrepreneurship. The hypothesis of classical economics is that the academic inventor or corporate scientist operates under conditions of substantial rationality during the process of knowledge transfer from research to enterprise. The reality, however, is that their actions owe much to spontaneity and unpredictability, deriving from their personal knowledge set and from the opportunities for dynamic learning and for relationships with other individuals offered by laboratory life. The cognitive matrix of academic spin-offs is therefore complex and, if there is to be effective connection with people and innovative organizations capable of enhancing their prospects of success, the old vision that is confined to one-dimensional aspects of the entrepreneurial phenomenon must be rejected. There is thus a need for an integrated study which simultaneously takes into account the particular context, the business model and the individual mechanisms of sharing and transferring knowledge. (Contains 1 figure.)