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The desire of many engineers is to see their work end up as a final product offering a real benefit to society—for a lecturer/professor at a university, this is a dream often out of reach of the majority. However, the university academic is a changed species from the early days of the binary line between Universities and Polytechnics and when a lecturer meant just that—teaching to future engineers. This article describes the process and experience gained by a university engineer to spin out their research from the university sector and achieve the goal of a product reaching a global audience.

PurposeThis paper describes and discusses company spin-ins and spin-outs as a means to understand company growth in a dynamic context. The following question is asked: How can growth be understood in spin-ins and spin-outs of innovative firms? The paper suggests return on capabilities as a measure to understand growth in an open innovation context.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical part of the paper consists of a single case study. Data was captured through interviews and secondary data sources.FindingsThe paper points to that resources alone do not explain strategic decisions by a company and how spin-ins and spin-outs result from the need for capabilities, changes in business foci and temporary solutions to deal with overcapacities or lack of alternatives.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to research by discussing contemporary issues in strategy and innovation and relating them to the resource-based view and the growth of the firm. Spin-outs, and acquisitions and divestitures as interlinked events have rarely been focused on in the literature, while they remain frequent phenomena in practice.

Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD) and obesity are associated with frequent exacerbations and poor quality of life in asthmatics. Multiple mechanisms have been proposed for the effect of obesity, including modification of inflammation affecting epithelial cell proliferation and wound repair, while the role of GORD is poorly understood and proton pump inhibitor (PPI) are of variable efficacy. GORD might exert a deleterious effect by inducing vagal reflex, neuroinflammation and directly ( via microaspiration) triggering airway inflammation. Studies of reflux in animal models and human bronchial epithelial cell culture show varying impact on inflammation and airway remodelling. Footnotes This manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the European Respiratory Journal . It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJ online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article. Conflict of interest: Dr PEROTIN has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Schofield has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Wilson has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Ward has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Brandsma has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Strazzeri has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Bansal has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Yang has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Rowe reports and a full time employee and shareholder of Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson. Conflict of interest: Miss Corfield has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Lutter has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Prof. Shaw reports personal fees and non-financial support from AstraZeneca, personal fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, personal fees from Novartis, personal fees from Teva, personal fees from Circassia, and a grant from GSK, outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: Dr Bakke reports personal fees from GSK, AZ, Novartis andTeva, outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: MC have no conflict of interest to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Dahlen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Fowler reports personal fees and non-financial support from AstraZeneca, grants and personal fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, personal fees from Novartis, personal fees from Teva, outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: Dr Horvath reports personal fees from Astra Zeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, CSL, Chiesi, Roche, GSK, Berlin-Chemie and Sandoz, outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: Dr Howarth reports personal fees from GSK, outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: Dr Krug has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Montuschi has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Sanak has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Sandstrom reports other monetary support from Boehringer Ingelheim, outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: Dr Sun has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Pandis has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Auffray reports grants from Innovative Medicine Initiative, during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: Dr De Meulder reports grants from Innovative Medicine Initiative, during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: Ms. Lefaudeux reports grants from Innovative Medicine Initiative, grants from Innovative Medicine Initiative, during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: Dr Riley reports and I have shares in and I am employed by GSK. Conflict of interest: Dr Sousa has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Dahlen has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Adcock reports grants from EU-IMI, during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: KFC has received honoraria for participating in Advisory Board meetings of GSK, AZ, BI, Teva, Novartis and Merck regarding treatments for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and has also been renumerated for speaking engagements. Conflict of interest: Dr Sterk reports grants from Innovative Medicines Initiative, during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: Dr Skipp has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Collins reports a patent application for use of a genetically modified Drosophila line carrying one or more mammalian genes associated with a chronic respiratory disease and uses to screen the impact of such genes. Conflict of interest: Dr Davies has nothing to disclose. Conflict of interest: Dr Djukanovic reports receiving fees for lectures at symposia organised by Novartis, AstraZeneca and TEVA, consultation for TEVA and Novartis as member of advisory boards, and participation in a scientific discussion about asthma organised by GlaxoSmithKline. He is a co-founder and current consultant, and has shares in Synairgen, a University of Southampton spin out company.

Steady Raw Materials (RM) supply is essential for the EU economy and increasingly under pressure to sustain the businesses and industries demand. The supply of RM is not only a matter of availability of primary but also of secondary raw materials (SRM). In fact a great amount of waste can be regained as practical and valuable SRM by enhancing the recovery processes from industrial, mining and municipal landfill sites, especially if we consider that Europe is highly dependent on the imports of several RM. Nevertheless, there is to date no inventory of SRM at EU level. Smart Ground project aims to facilitate the availability and accessibility of data and information on SRM in the EU, as well as creating synergy and collaboration between the different stakeholders involved in the SRM value chain. In order to do so, the Smart Ground consortium is carrying out a set of activities to integrate in a single EU database all the data from existing sources and new information retrieving pilot landfills as progress is made. Such database will enable the exchange of contacts and information among the relevant stakeholders, interested in providing or obtaining SRM. Finally, Smart Ground project will also spin out the SRM economy and employment thanks to targeted training activities, organized during congresses and dedicated meeting with stakeholders and end users interested in calculating the potentiality for SRM recovery from selected landfills, contemporary constituting a dedicated network of stakeholders committed to cost-effective research, technology transfer and training.

Mobile-bearing Oxford medial unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) has been widely used and has produced good results in the treatment of medial compartmental osteoarthritis. But it is associated with the potential risk of meniscal bearing dislocation. Symptoms caused by most meniscal bearing dislocations include acute pain, knee swelling, and locking. We report two unusual cases of meniscal bearing spinning of 180° without remarkable symptoms, which would have been easily missed if we had not watched carefully. Therefore, if there is sudden locking, pain, swelling, or a slight locking history, the possibility of meniscal bearing spin out as well as meniscal bearing dislocation should be considered and the direction of meniscal bearing markers should be confirmed, especially on lateral radiographs.

Recent work has demonstrated the potential of gravitationally lensed quasars to extend measurements of black hole spin out to high-redshift with the current generation of X-ray observatories. Here we present an analysis of a large sample of 27 lensed quasars in the redshift range 1.0, Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

This article focuses on corporate spinouts as a strategy that can rejuvenate the inventive efforts of inventors with a long tenure in the same company. We rely on an unbalanced panel of 5,604 inventor-year observations to study a matched sample of 431 inventors employed by the Xerox Corporation and find evidence in support of three predictions. First, inventors who join a spinout increase the extent of exploration in their inventive activities. Second, they decrease the extent to which they rely on the parent organization’s knowledge. Third, because long-tenured employees, through socialization, tend to progressively adopt more exploitative behavior than short-tenured members, they benefit relatively more from the spinout experience. These results are robust to several econometric specifications that try to account for the endogeneity of the inventors’ decision to join the spinout, for the fact that spinouts’ inventive activity may be intrinsically different from that of the parent company, and for the possible presence of novel external stimuli for those who join spinouts. The data provide large-sample evidence consistent with the idea that socialization reduces opportunities for organizational learning; we discuss the implications for theory and practice.

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 38 (4), ISSN:0892-9912, ISSN:1573-7047

The ‘right to request’ policy encouraged and supported National Health Service (NHS) community health staff in England to ‘spin out’ services into independent social enterprises. This article considers the processes and outputs of the initiative and reflects on the likelihood of positive outcomes for patients being achieved. It highlights lessons for future programmes seeking to transfer services out of public ownership.