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The Antlect Spinout Tracker records spinouts from research institutions, beginning with Australia and New Zealand, together with the core technology behind each one. Spinout formation sits along the knowledge translation spectrum, at the point where research moves into a business and produces economic or social outcomes. What makes it worth examining systematically is that formation is unevenly distributed. A small number of institutions account for a disproportionate share of it, and that concentration is not explained by research volume alone. Accounting for it requires knowing not only what has formed, but what it formed from. The tracker holds both. Every spinout is recorded with the core technology it is built on, resolved against the Antlect Technology Matrix, which places spinout formation on the same classification as the research that precedes it. Formation can then be read against the research base it emerged from, across institutions and across technology areas, rather than as a count held separately by each institution.

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What the tracker holds

For each spinout: the originating institution, the core technology it is built on, the research base it was formed on, and the formation route through which it emerged. Where a spinout draws on more than one institution or spans more than one technology area, both are recorded rather than reduced to a single attribution. Spinouts are identified from institutional and commercialisation records, company registers, and investment and funding records, and each is verified against the research base it is attributed to. The tracker is maintained continuously, since company status changes and a record of formation is only useful if it reflects the present state.

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How the tracker is used

The tracker operates as context. It can be applied to a specific query to return formation activity for an institution or technology area, or applied across the system to examine activity system-wide. Because spinouts are classified on the same basis as publications, patents, clinical trials and funding, the research underlying formation in a technology area can be examined directly, as can the areas where research capability exists and formation has occurred elsewhere. The tracker forms part of the Antlect ontology and is available as context that can be applied to any query on the platform.