The specific factors that influence the entrepreneurial inclination of students were studied with a view to designing appropriate policies on entrepreneurship within tertiary institutions. The sample for the study consisted of 7,560 students from a total of 25 tertiary institutions with 83% response rate. While we found that entrepreneurial interest among Nigerian students is quite high, the expression of this interest in practice is rather low. The main factors found to significantly explain entrepreneurial interest are parents" educational qualifications, family entrepreneurial history, family sociodemographics, students" entrepreneurial experience, and students" socio-demographics. Of the fourteen variables identified as being central in encouraging students" entrepreneurial interests, only five can be defined as necessary, though but not sufficient, conditions to stimulate interest: gender, number of children by father, position among mother"s children, father"s monthly income and entrepreneurial education. This has policy implications both for government and the institutions. The study is the first of its magnitude in Nigeria and provides baseline information for researchers and policy makers who need to better understand the dynamics of entrepreneurship among Nigerian youth.

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R&D and Innovation activities, which lead to technological progress, are considered as important factors contributing to stable and continuous economic growth. Total Factor Productivity accounts for the proportion of economic growth that is not captured by labour and capital inputs, and is measured by R&D and innovation in this paper. The paper investigates the impact of R&D and innovation, labour and capital on economic growth in Nigeria using Least Square Method. The result of the thirty one (31) years reviewed shows that Gross Expenditure on R&D (GERD) has significant impact on economic growth. The coefficient of R&D which is negatively related to economic growth implies that it is not enough to increase spending on R&D and innovation when there are weak institutions, high corruption practices, low interaction between the academia and the industry, uncoordinated industrial clusters, among others. The result also shows that both labour and capital are directly related to economic growth, though the former plays a significant role while the latter does not. This paper concludes that government must be committed to R&D and innovation funding, developing strong institutions, enhancing the academia-industrial linkage as well as implementing a workable science, technology and innovation policy in order to bolster and diversify the economy. Government should also provide various fiscal incentives for the industrial firms in their various clusters so as to encourage them to engage in R&D and innovation activities, either through reverse engineering or inventing new ones, as this will not only lead to economic growth but also raise the global competitiveness of Nigeria.

Universities are recognised as important sources of knowledge for critical innovative performance of industries through commercialisation of their Research and Development (R&D) outputs otherwise called Academic entrepreneurship. This paper examines the approaches and extent of Academic entrepreneurship of the Federal Universities of Technology in pursuit of sustainable development in Nigeria. The study adopted survey technique with population of all the lecturers in the Universities. A sample size of 528 researchers/lecturers were drawn from the rank of Senior Lecturer to Professor in 16 relevant Departments of the Federal Universities of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Owerri (FUTO) and Minna (FUTM) with a response rate of 67.07%. Descriptive statistics such as percentage and mean; and regression analysis as inferential statistics were employed for data analysis. The result of analysis revealed that a multiple of R&D outputs generated by the reseachers are academic publications (100.0%), copyrights (12.2%), industrial designs (11.40%), patents registered in Nigeria (4.60%), patents registered outside Nigeria (1.6%). Only 20.95% of the researchers claimed to have commercialised their R&D outputs through outright sales of R&D outputs (76.67%), sales of patents (18.33%); and joint venture with industries (8.33%). The regression analysis of data revealed that the academic entrepreneurial and innovative performance of the researchers were influenced by access to research fund (β=36.49, p ≤ 0.01), R&D and innovation incentives (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05), government policy implementations (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05), infrastructure and research facilities (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05), business technical support services (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.01), industrial patronages (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05), industrial partnerships and collaborations (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05) entrepreneurial drive of the researchers (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05), field of research (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05); and business advisory services (β = 36.67, p ≤ 0.05). All the variables contributed 29.74% (R2 = 0.2974) to the academic entrepreneurial and innovative behaviours of the researchers. The study also showed that the contributions of the academic entrepreneurship to sustainable development are improved product/process quality (67.32%), utilisation of local raw material (61.97%), eco-innovation (60.73%), product diversification (54.81%), research-industry partnership (49.05%), increased production capacity (47.22%); and generation of new employment (44.18%). The paper concluded that, there is a marginal improvement in the academic entrepreneurship for sustainable development in Nigeria. However, the need for policy intervention to encourage greater and adequate R&D funding support by government and private organisations is required.