Abstract
This paper investigates how the characteristics of university laboratories influence the propensity of Ph.D. students to entrepreneurship, and thus, contribute to the transfer of academic knowledge to society. As determinants of Ph.D. entrepreneurship, we focus on the lab scientific and social capital as well as on the business experience that Ph.D. students acquire during their training period. The empirical exercise is based on questionnaire survey data of 5266 Ph.D. students in Italian universities in all subject areas. First, we find that 6.7% of the Ph.D. graduates engage in startup activities, and thus, Ph.D. training seems to contribute to knowledge transfer through entrepreneurship. Second, Ph.D. entrepreneurship is driven by business experience, in the forms of industry collaboration and industrially applicable research projects, during their training period. Third, the lab scientific capital is negatively associated with Ph.D. entrepreneurship, suggesting a conflict between scientific excellence and entrepreneurship, but this effect is mitigated if students acquire business experience. Fourth, the lab social capital increases the chance of startup when students have business experience. We further investigate the effects of lab environment by distinguishing between startups that are based on university research and startups that are not, finding different determinants.
Highlights
Political pressure is currently being put on universities to stimulate and support entrepreneurship
We argue that Ph.D. entrepreneurship needs business experience, scientific expertise, and social network, and as a device to provide these opportunities and resources, we focus on the local environment of university laboratories where Ph.D. students receive academic training
We examine the probability of Ph.D. graduates’ becoming entrepreneurs by logit regressions and find that lab capitals and business experience affect Ph.D. entrepreneurship
Summary
Political pressure is currently being put on universities to stimulate and support entrepreneurship. Among all the routes of academic engagement with industry (see Muscio and Vallanti 2014), starting up a company based on scientific research results is an important one, when technology transfer requires a high level of commitment on the side of academics. The literature on this topic has been dynamic; while empirical works on ‘tangible’ forms of knowledge transfer, ranging from patenting to licensing activity are abundant, investigations on academic entrepreneurship via academic spin-offs has become more prominent over the last decade, as an increasing number of academics have chosen and been encouraged to engage in entrepreneurial activities. We observe increasing incidents of startups by students— by Ph.D. students—as academic institutions are encouraging them to become more entrepreneurial by offering entrepreneurship courses, supporting facilities such as business incubators, business competitions, and innovation prizes
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