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Spinouts from academic institutions: a literature review with suggestions for further research

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Abstract

This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of the phenomenon of spinouts from academic institutions. We systematically identified spinout papers in key management journals, categorised the literature and critically synthesised the findings. We present the findings of each literature stream in turn and also identify inconsistencies and directions for further research. We conclude that while the early literature has been mainly atheoretical and focused on describing the phenomenon, a core group of recent studies were theory-driven.

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Notes

  1. The main keywords we have used to screen the articles were: universit* start*, universit* spin*, academic spin*, academic start*, academic start*, entrepreneur* universit*, universit* commercialisation, universit* ntbf, academic* ntbf. The asterisk stands for finding all combinations of a word or word fragment. E.g. spin* finds spinouts as well as spinoffs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful suggestions of the two anonymous reviewers and would like to thank Gerard George and Nicos Nicolaou for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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  1. Cass Business School, City University, 106 Bunhill Row, EC1Y 8TZ, London, UK

    Djordje Djokovic & Vangelis Souitaris

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  1. Djordje Djokovic
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  2. Vangelis Souitaris
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Correspondence to Vangelis Souitaris.

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Djokovic, D., Souitaris, V. Spinouts from academic institutions: a literature review with suggestions for further research. J Technol Transfer 33, 225–247 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-006-9000-4

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