Spinouts, because of the nature of their assets, the make up of their shareholders and the academic (rather than business) background of their managers, face particular problems in becoming successful enterprises. Some would say that their track record in overcoming these problems has not been good.

The problems we have identified in this article centre on capital-raising and achieving a successful exit, and the reasons we have suggested for the problems are lack of management expertise, confusion over the value of IP, inability to attract funding from investor institutions and inability to maintain sound relations with their investors.

Some universities, notably Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College, appear to have been more successful with their spinouts than others in both capital raising and successful exits (and, probably, by other measures also, such as income and employment generation), but even they appear to lag behind the more successful American universities.