We investigate the role played by different fields of academic knowledge and various types of higher education institutions in the emergence of innovative start-ups in a region. We show that education and research in the applied and natural sciences have the strongest effect on the emergence of new businesses in innovative industries. Distinguishing between different indicators for these types of knowledge, the strongest effects are found for the number of professors, followed by the number of students and the amount of external funds attracted. This discovery clearly indicates that it is more the size of the regional knowledge stock than the number of students that is most important for the emergence of innovative stat-ups.