Universities and start-up creation by Ph.D. graduates: the role of scientific and social capital of academic laboratories

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. © 2021, The Author(s).

Keywords

Author Keywords

Entrepreneurial university academic training Firm creation Ph.D Start-up Student entrepreneurship

Index Keywords

Students Knowledge management Knowledge transfer Laboratories Questionnaire surveys Surveys Industry collaboration Academic laboratory Social capitals University laboratories University research Plant startup

Author Affiliations

Department of Economics, Università degli Studi di Foggia, Foggia, FG, Italy

Företagsekonomiska Institutionen, Lund, Skane, Sweden

Dipartimento di Economia e Management, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, FE, Italy

Funding & Acknowledgements

Grant: 19K01830

The authors are grateful to Ugo Rizzo for his help with the data cleaning process and to CINECA for the questionnaire administration and data collection.

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Universities and start-up creation by Ph.D. graduates: the role of scientific and social capital of academic laboratories

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