Abstract

PurposeThe study aims to examine the development of student venture creation in a co-curricular business model lab initiative with collaboration between students, researchers, technology transfer offices (TTO) and industry. It presents a fresh approach to the study of student venture creation by discussing a unique co-curricular case, its embeddedness in a network and drawing on the concept of tension.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative, case-based research design is applied containing data from interviews, observations and active participation.FindingsThe findings point to the inherent difficulties in managing and organizing student venture creation and networks surrounding the student venture creation in a co-curricular setting that can lead to several different types of tensions. Episodes where task-, role-, process-, affective- and value-related tensions arise are identified. Furthermore, the findings highlight that affective-related tension is often an outcome of other types of tensions.Research limitations/implicationsOur theoretical implications point to the importance of the context of student venture creation, but not only regarding curricular and co-curricular initiatives; depending on the context, such as if student surrogate entrepreneurship is used, different types of support structure might also be needed to enable student venture creation.Originality/valueResearch on the entrepreneurial university has mainly focused on entrepreneurship education and ventures created by researchers. This study responds to recent calls for research on the venture creation of students. The limited research conducted on student venture creation can be divided between curricular and co-curricular initiatives. Our research points out that many other contextual factors are of importance, such as the origin of ideas, student surrogate entrepreneurship, industry collaboration, team formation and expectations.

Highlights

  • Entrepreneurship is an important aspect for most universities; it is expected that universities collaborate with industry, create new ventures and educate future entrepreneurs

  • Our findings point to the inherent difficulties in managing and organizing student venture creation

  • In the iteration processes between theory and empirical data, we found that tension was an important concept to investigate further; we added a theory around tensions in networks and different types of tensions

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Entrepreneurship is an important aspect for most universities; it is expected that universities collaborate with industry, create new ventures and educate future entrepreneurs The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Objectives
Methods
Findings
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call