Types of Spin-Out Firms and Collaborations With Parent Organizations

This chapter provides a framework for understanding the diverse types of spin-outs and how they collaborate with the parent organizations from which their founders came. It organizes the still-growing literature on types of spin-outs based on (a) the previous employment sector of spin-out entrepreneurs and (b) the parental involvement in the spin-out process. Both factors affect employee entrepreneurs’ motives for creating spin-outs, the spin-outs’ inheritance of capabilities, and subsequent performance. The chapter also relates the types of spin-outs with the variety of collaborative relationships between a spin-out firm and its parent organization at both the interorganizational and interpersonal levels. It describes research directions based on the subtle yet conceptually and managerially significant differences between the types of spin-outs, and based on the corresponding variety in their patterns or modes of collaborative relationships with parents.