Low business start-ups due to poor entrepreneurial competence among the youth has continued to attract the interest of entrepreneurship educators and practitioners. Previous investigations have explored individual entrepreneurial orientation, with little attention given to entrepreneurial readiness of students from science and technology colleges in Nigeria. This research shortcoming forms the motivation for this study. The study aims to explore the effect of Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation (IEO) components on students’ entrepreneurial readiness for business start-ups. The philosophical approach is framed within the positivist perspective, with a survey of 289 exit-level students as the sample size. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test and Bartlett’s test were performed to measure the sample adequacy. Pearson’s correlation and regression analysis were conducted to validate the hypotheses. The results indicated that IEO risk-taking shows insignificant association with the students’ entrepreneurial readiness, while IEO innovation and IEO proactivity show significant association with the students’ entrepreneurial readiness. The study further reveals that there is no gender difference in the students’ entrepreneurial readiness as influenced by IEO towards starting a business. Managerial implication suggests the promotion and development of an entrepreneurial mindset with practical translations. © The Author(s) 2024.
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