Academic spin-outs: the journey from idea to credible proposition – a combination of knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer and knowledge translation

A key entrepreneurial activity in recent times, in relation to promoting the effectiveness of intellectual property exploitation and knowledge/technology transfer, has been the increased focus on and the activity related to the creation of spin-out companies from universities. This paper describes and explores an innovative and highly successful process (The Fellowship Support Programme or FSP) that has been used in Scotland to facilitate the transfer of academics from a research-based environment to the entrepreneurial business world, and discusses the implications for policy and underlying structures in relation to knowledge acquisition, knowledge transfer and knowledge translation, with a view to providing new research directions as well as offering a potential model for facilitating the process of academic spin-outs and new wealth creation and entrepreneurship in technology-based industries.