Spinoff
Spinoff refers to a new independent venture (or project) that is created from a parent venture (or project). Thus spinoff refers to the type of affiliation between the two ventures (or projects).
A spinoff can occur when the the focus of activities within a venture (or project) diverges or splits into two or more foci. In order to reduce internal complexity, a new focus that has gained critical mass can be separated as an independent venture (or project). This is different from forking because the spinoff process splits an organization into two or more organizations that have very different foci of activity (can be products or services). Forking is used in the context of hardware development when a new version of a deliverable is created. When applied at the organizational level, forking results into two or more organizations that are focused on very similar deliverables (versions of each others), that may address different user (consumers) profiles (ex. a low cost version and a high-end version).
Background
Spinoffs have occurred within Sensorica very early on, from the Mosquito Project. As development on force measurement sensors proliferated, various types of optical fiber sensors were created and took a life on their own. Tor example, the Tape sensor saw applications outside of biotech / muscle contraction studies and thus became a separate venture with concrete activities for development and commercialization. These early stages spinoffs were not treated in a very systematic way.
In December 2022 the Decanter Centrifuge venture was spanoff Greens for Good, within the Sensorica OVN. This was the first attempt to systematize a spinoff process.
List of tasks for a spinoff
This is based on the Decanter Centrifuge case mentioned above. Interesting to know how these tasks can be automated in the future.
- Infrastructure changes: Ventures require tools for collaboration and resource stewarding. Since a spinoff is a segregation of activities, this must be reflected at the infrastructure level.
- Webpage: A new webpage is created for the new spinoff venture. The webpage has two important functions, a public-facing front-shop / landing page, and a digital environment for collaboration, which integrates all the collaborative tools and gives access to all the repositories and to the planning.
- NRP-CAS: A new context agent entity is created in the NRP-CAS for the new spinoff venture. This is how ventures are represented in the NRP-CAS. It is recommended to have the spinoff venture be set as a child of the parent venture, which is an affiliation type in the NRP language (it can be replaced with spinoff).
- In terms of contributions, past contributions can remain associated with the parent venture. All new contributions are logged in the context of the new spinoff venture. The is child of affiliation type (relation) should inform benefit redistribution algorithms to take into considerations past contributions from the parent venture.
- Documentation changes: All documentation that treats specifically about the focus of the spinoff venture (its deliverables for example) are modified to reflect that fact that this is an independent venture. For example, in the documentation, links to the parent venture's website are replaced with links to the new venture's webpage. It is recommended that references to the parent venture be kept (ex. mention that this venture is a spinoff of another venture).
- Incentives: The spinoff venture should generate its own incentives starting from the date of its birth. All past contributions logged in the context of the parent venture will be rewarded from benefits generated by the parent venture as well as from benefits generated by the spinoff venture, according to how the benefit redistribution algorithms is programmed to follow the stream into the parent venture, which is a matter of governance of the spinoff venture.