Title: Distinguishing between spinouts and non-spinouts: allocating control rights in biotechnology alliances

Authors: Jongwook Kim; Marko Madunic

Addresses: Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, Western Washington University, 516 High Street, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA ' Department of Management, College of Business and Economics, Western Washington University, 516 High Street, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA

Abstract: Spinouts are startups founded by employees of established firms in the same industry. Spinouts inherit technological and market-related knowledge from their parent companies. In contrast, non-spinout startups that do not have such close connections to an industry incumbent firm will have a different endowment of technological and market knowledge. Given this contrast between different startups in a risky science-based industry such as biotechnology, we explore whether spinout startups are different from non-spinouts in how control rights are allocated in strategic alliances. We develop a predictive model to distinguish whether an alliance is a spinout startup or a non-spinout startup.

Keywords: spinouts; control rights; strategic alliances; biotechnology; non-spinouts; biotech alliances; startups; spinoffs; predictive modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2014.066660

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2014 Vol.11 No.4, pp.334 - 356

Received: 14 Dec 2013
Accepted: 30 Jul 2014
Published online: 11 Jan 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article