New ventures depend on the capability of entrepreneurs to transform an idea or a technology into a successful company. The literature on entrepreneurship has recognized that Entrepreneurship ...Education (EE) plays a key role in this process, but the literature on academic spinoffs has focused on other determinants (e.g., Technology Transfer Offices - TTO, and university research expenditures). This research investigates the role of EE in the creation of academic spinoffs by using a new dataset built around 1262 entrepreneurship courses offered between 2011 and 2014 by 80 US universities included in the Licensing Survey by the Association of University Technology Managers - AUTM). Adopting a Poisson panel regression model, we show that, in addition to TTO size and university research expenditures, EE favours the creation of academic spinoffs. Moreover, we find that practical – rather than theoretical - entrepreneurship courses favour the creation of academic spinoffs. We conclude discussing the theoretical and practical implications for universities, students and scholars interested in entrepreneurship.
Although a great deal of attention has been paid to entrepreneurship education, only a few studies have analysed the impact of extra-curricular entrepreneurial activities on students’ entrepreneurial ...intention. The aim of this study is to fill this gap by exploring the role played by Student-Led Entrepreneurial Organizations (SLEOs) in shaping the entrepreneurial intention of their members. The analysis is based on a survey that was conducted in 2016 by one of the largest SLEOs in the world: the Junior Enterprises Europe (JEE). The main result of the empirical analysis is that the more time students spent on JEE and the higher the number of events students attended, the greater their entrepreneurial intention was. It has been found that other important drivers also increase students’ entrepreneurial intention, that is, the Science and Technology field of study and the knowledge of more than two foreign languages. These results confirm that SLEOs are able to foster students’ entrepreneurial intention. The findings provide several theoretical, practical and public policy implications. SLEOs are encouraged to enhance their visibility and lobbying potential in order to be recognized more as drivers of student entrepreneurship. In addition, it is advisable for universities and policy makers to support SLEOs by fostering their interactions with other actors operating in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, who promote entrepreneurship and technology transfer activities. Lastly, this paper advises policy makers to assist SLEOs’ activities inside and outside the university context.
Entrepreneurship education can increase student's entrepreneurial skills and intention; and entrepreneurship activities stimulate economic growth. Therefore, the number of entrepreneurship courses is ...increasing, but they are often offered to students from a specific field of study and/or to only one educational level, even though multidisciplinarity is important for entrepreneurship. This study has carried out an exploratory single case study on an entrepreneurial programme in a multidisciplinary environment, that is, the Contamination Lab of Turin (CLabTo). Moreover, pre- and post-surveys have also been conducted in order to perform some qualitative analyses. The results show the importance of creating teams with different competencies, cognitive and decision-making skills. Moreover, we explain how design-thinking is useful in entrepreneurship education and that a challenge-based entrepreneurship course leads to cooperation with external actors in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. It is also explained what the obstacles and opportunities of these programmes are and how to improve them. Moreover, on the basis of pre- and post-surveys, our qualitative analyses show that the students' overall perception of their abilities to work in a multidisciplinary team, their entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial intentions increased slightly. In short, this work is aimed at increasing the importance of entrepreneurship education in a multidisciplinary environment and the use of practical-oriented teaching models.
In the fall of 2019, a global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) negatively impacted the economy of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide. It is essential to identify effective resilience ...strategies to help SMEs overcome economic and financial crises caused by pandemics or other exogenous crises. This paper delves into this aspect by asking the following research question: How can Open Innovation and dynamic capabilities be leveraged by SMEs to develop resilience during an exogenous crisis?. The study employs a mixed methods approach to investigate the experiences of SMEs located in the Free State of Bavaria (Germany). Based on the quantitative and qualitative data collected and analysed, this study proposes an innovative framework, named Dynamic Open Innovation Funnel, which integrates the managerial constructs of Open Innovation and dynamic capabilities to support SMEs resilience during exogenous crises.
•We offer a dynamic capabilities perspective to the Open Innovation funnel.•We propose Open Innovation as a resilience strategy to exogenous crises.•We define a new framework called Dynamic Open Innovation Funnel.
•A social incubator (SI) is focused on start-ups with a significant social impact.•SIs give more attention to social impact measurements compared to other incubators.•SIs give more attention to ...business ethics and CSR compared to other incubators.•SIs are as efficient as other incubators in terms of tenants’ growth.•SIs are a recent phenomenon.
This paper defines and analyses incubators that mainly support start-ups with a significant social impact. In 2016, a survey was conducted on the 162 incubators active in Italy, and a total of 88 responses were received. An analysis of the literature and of this dataset led to the identification of three types of incubators: Business, Mixed, and Social. Thirty of the respondents sent information on their tenants. Thanks to the data regarding 247 tenants, it was possible to analyze the impact of the three different types of incubators (Business, Mixed, and Social) on the tenants’ growth through OLS regression analyses. A Social Incubator is here defined as an incubator that supports more than 50% of start-ups that aim to introduce a positive social impact. The study shows that Social Incubators perceive social impact measurement and training/consulting on business ethics and CSR as being more important services than other incubator types. The regression analyses explain that Social Incubators are as efficient as other incubators, in terms of tenants’ economic growth, notwithstanding the focus of Social Incubators on start-ups that do not pursue only economic objectives. Finally, this study indicates that policymakers can foster Social Incubators to support social entrepreneurship.
Student entrepreneurship is becoming more relevant for universities throughout the world. Therefore, it is important to analyze the strategies and mechanisms adopted by universities to support ...student entrepreneurship. In this article, we analyze the mechanisms used by universities to promote student entrepreneurship through University Business Idea Incubators as part of their Third Mission. University Business Idea Incubators can act as preincubators or preaccelerators that are designed to help a growing number of university students from different backgrounds interact and develop their entrepreneurial ideas in a safe and creative environment. In such a context, we performed a cross-case study methodology on a national program that is aimed at creating Italian University Business Idea Incubators. As a result, we have identified the five key features and 12 strategies adopted by University Business Idea Incubators to cultivate student entrepreneurship. The article also presents some examples of successful business ideas developed by students as a result of their participation in University Business Idea Incubators. The obtained results also demonstrate how University Business Idea Incubators foster intellectual capital to sustain the development of an entrepreneurial mindset and competences, with the objective of favoring both the creation of concrete new ideas and of offering new challenge-based learning approaches to university students. We also offer some ideas that could be incorporated in educational policies to support university student entrepreneurship.
•This study lists the services provided in Science and Technology Parks (STPs).•STP's managers have four alternatives to provide an innovation service.•Six main drivers influence managers’ choices in ...providing services.
Science and Technology Parks (STPs) are key elements of the infrastructure supporting the growth of today's global knowledge economy. STPs create environments that foster collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and provide innovation services to support new technology-based firms in their activities. However, despite the extensive research on STPs, limited evidence has been provided regarding their organization of a portfolio of innovation services. In this work, we deepen the organizational challenges in developing a portfolio of innovation services through the analysis of the literature and ethnographic research on six case studies of European STPs in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. In conclusion, based on the literature and the case studies, we highlight i) the four main alternatives to include an innovation service in an STP's portfolio; ii) the fundamental six drivers influencing the choice between these different alternatives.
Blockchain is a promising and emerging technology. Despite the number of studies on the subject, several studies require further exploration of the relationship between blockchain and social ...innovation. Moreover, there is an increasing interest in social entrepreneurship and in how technical solutions may address social or environmental issues. Hence, this work aims at understanding how a venture can apply blockchain technology for social good. The study adopts a qualitative approach based on a case study and builds on stakeholder theory as a theoretical background. The case study under review is a social venture working on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 10. Our findings present four peculiarities of blockchain for social good: (i) reliability, (ii) transparency, (iii) decentralization, and (iv) accessibility. Moreover, the present study develops a framework on blockchain for social good based on the possible stakeholders' involvement. Finally, four challenges related to blockchain for social good are presented and discussed.
The literature presents various contributions regarding students' entrepreneurial intentions. However, only a few recent papers have delved into the realm of student entrepreneurship, encompassing ...both nascent entrepreneurs (i.e., students who are in the process of creating their own businesses) and active entrepreneurs (i.e., students who already own and are running their own businesses). Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have explored the association between individual skills, such as coding and digital skills, and students' entrepreneurial intentions and student entrepreneurship. This paper aims at filling these gaps by quantitatively testing if coding and digital skills are significant factors for students' entrepreneurial engagement and student entrepreneurship. Throughout this paper, the term "students' entrepreneurial engagement" encompasses both students' entrepreneurial intentions and student entrepreneurship. Drawing on perspectives from human capital and social capital theories, we hypothesized that these individual skills could have a statistically significant positive impact on students' entrepreneurial engagement and student entrepreneurship. To assess coding and digital skills, we categorized them into knowledge and experience, as suggested by the human capital theory. Through several regression analyses on 2608 Italian university students, we validated our hypotheses. These findings contribute both theoretically and practically to the entrepreneurship literature.
PurposeEntrepreneurship Education (EE) is increasing throughout the world. In 2012, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) financed Contamination Labs (CLabs), which are ...laboratories that are aimed at developing entrepreneurial mindsets in all university students. This study analyses the entrepreneurial learning process mechanisms adopted in these CLabs.Design/methodology/approachAn ethnographic case study was performed in two Italian CLabs from October 2017 to December 2019.FindingsFindings demonstrate that the CLabs in Italy are promising Entrepreneurship Education Centres which create programmes to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in students with different educational backgrounds and levels. Interdisciplinarity in the composition of the student teams, virtuous contamination of knowledge and experience between the students and the stakeholders from the entrepreneurial ecosystem are the key pillars to foster an entrepreneurial mindset in all the students.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations of this work regard the need to expand the analysis to all the other CLabs created in Italian universities.Practical implicationsThe findings provide indications that may be used to guide a university faculty in the design and management of Entrepreneurship Education Centres in collaboration with entrepreneurs, corporations, student clubs, incubators and representatives of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Moreover, the results point out a need to develop interdisciplinary entrepreneurial programmes.Originality/valueThe originality resides in the analysis of a novel type of Entrepreneurship Education Centre in Italian Universities created as the result of an ad-hoc Italian policy.
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