Abstract
This paper investigates how the encouragement of entrepreneurship within university research labs relates with research activities, research outputs, and early doctorate careers. Utilizing a panel survey of 6,840 science & engineering doctoral students at 39 R1 research universities, this study shows that entrepreneurship is widely encouraged across university research labs, ranging from 54% in biomedical engineering to 18% in particle physics, while only a small share of labs openly discourage entrepreneurship, from approximately 3% in engineering to approximately 12% in the life sciences. Within fields, there is no difference between labs that encourage entrepreneurship and those that do not with respect to basic research activity and the number of publications. At the same time, labs that encourage entrepreneurship are significantly more likely to report invention disclosures, particularly in engineering where such labs are 41% more likely to disclose inventions. With respect to career pathways, PhDs students in labs that encourage entrepreneurship do not differ from other PhDs in their interest in academic careers, but they are 87% more likely to be interested in careers in entrepreneurship and 44% more likely to work in a startup after graduation. These results persist even when accounting for individuals’ pre-PhD interest in entrepreneurship and the encouragement of other non-academic industry careers.
Highlights
Entrepreneurial activity is increasingly encouraged on university campuses in the hope that it will foster the commercialization of scientific discoveries, stimulate job creation, and generate greater returns to federal investments in university research
This study first documents the encouragement of entrepreneurship across fields, universities, and faculty rank. It investigates the relationship between encouraging entrepreneurship in university labs and PhD students’ basic research activities, as well as their number of publications and invention disclosure activities
Approximately 35% of PhD students report that participating in entrepreneurship is encouraged in their lab, 58% report that their lab is indifferent toward participating in entrepreneurship, and 7% report that participating in entrepreneurship is discouraged in their lab
Summary
Entrepreneurial activity is increasingly encouraged on university campuses in the hope that it will foster the commercialization of scientific discoveries, stimulate job creation, and generate greater returns to federal investments in university research. To this end, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have recently introduced programs such as the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) to foster entrepreneurial activity and prepare science and engineering graduate students for careers in entrepreneurship [1]. Proponents contend that faculty and graduate students should embrace entrepreneurship as a means of broadening the impact of university research on society and economic growth, while lamenting that academic norms discouraging entrepreneurship hinder such.
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