We searched three major databases (ABI/INFORM, Business Source Premier and Science Direct) for specified keywords1 since not all of the databases are covering the same journals. After each query we manually searched through the abstracts to pre-screen the relevant articles. Subsequently we reviewed the references of each relevant article in order to identify published material not archived in the databases. After filtering and evaluating the initial pool of more than 250 papers, we extracted 103 relevant ones that included spinouts in their findings. We categorised these 103 papers into two groups: ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ spinout literature. The primary spinout literature included 61 papers, which deliberately and solely aimed to study the spinout phenomenon conceptually or empirically. Instead the 42 papers in the secondary literature did not exclusively focus on spinouts, but produced relevant findings through the study of wider phenomena, such as technology transfer and New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs). Figure 1 shows the number of primary and secondary spinout literature since 1990.
