Three explanations for the development of adolescents’ entrepreneurial potential

Abstract

This study examines the development of adolescents’ entrepreneurial potential. Our findings confirm the findings of previous research that family background has an impact on the development of entrepreneurial potential. At the same time, our findings indicate that the entrepreneurial potential of young people also develops in hobbies. This opens interesting new directions, especially for entrepreneurship education research. The target group of this quantitative study is Finnish ninth graders aged 15–16 (N = 10,979). We have used linear regression analysis to examine the three factors behind the development of adolescents’ individual entrepreneurial potential: school, leisure time activities, and entrepreneurial family environment. The young people's time is divided between these factors. Hence, this setting is interesting from the point of view of developing entrepreneurial potential. While school, family background and leisure time activities separately seem to play a role in the development of entrepreneurial potential, their relative importance has not been studied. In this article, we bring these three factors together in the same model to test their explanatory value for entrepreneurial potential.