Determinants and consequences of university spinoff activity: a conceptual framework

The characteristics and behavior of university spinoff activity is an important subject in economic and management studies literature. Such studies merit research because it is suggested that university innovations stimulate economies by spurring product development, by creating new industries, and by contributing to employment and wealth creation. For this reason, universities have come to be highly valued in terms of the economic potential of their research efforts. The aim of this paper is to offer a framework for the study of academic entrepreneurship that explains different aspects of university spinoff behavior in a coherent way. We suggest that the existing literature on this topic can be categorized into six separate streams and synthesized in a framework that captures the determinants and consequences of spinoff activity.