Creating entrepreneurial networks: academic entrepreneurship, mobility and collaboration during PhD education

Abstract

Network-building activities of PhD students are an important area of study in furthering our understanding of academic entrepreneurship. This paper focuses on PhD students' participation in network-building activities defined as mobility and collaboration, as well as own interest in and perceived grade of support for commercialisation from various levels of the university hierarchy. The results of a large-scale survey (of 1,126 PhD students at Linköping University, Sweden, 41% response rate) presented here show that the majority of PhD students are engaged in collaborations with external organisations, though quite few (one quarter) have spent a part of their PhD education outside their home university. PhD students from all faculties are on average interested in commercialisation and in favour of it. However, PhD students from the faculty of Health Sciences state that it is difficult for them to combine research and commercialisation. Furthermore, interest in commercialisation of research results is relatively lowest amongst those PhD students who are undertaking mobility placements at other universities, thus pointing to an experienced incompatibility of research and academic entrepreneurship.

Mapping the field: a bibliometric analysis of the literature on university–industry collaborations

“…Understanding the mechanisms enabling to maintain long-term U-I relations would improve the viability of the knowledge transfer, forming the basis for further R&D projects with reduced barriers. According to Bienkowska and Klofsten (2012), fostering the development of relationships among the partners could be achieved by promoting commercialisation of research results (CRR) skills and providing new opportunities for PhD candidates through courses, graduate schools and interactive research designs. At the same time the question remains of how U-I collaboration can be made attractive for partners from the industry by incentives other than funding schemes.…”

How can universities facilitate academic spin-offs? An entrepreneurial competency perspective

“…These tensions are likely to be more keenly felt at lower levels in the university organization (Bienkowska and Klofsten 2012) and particularly at individual level (Ambos et al 2008). However, it seems that scientists involved in commercial activities adopt a hybrid role identity that preserves the academic identity alongside their commercial role (Jain et al 2009).…”

“…Most studies considering initiatives and policies for spin-offs view universities as a 'black-box' with a uniform approach to spin-offs. However, there are significant differences in how spin-offs are promoted at different levels within universities (Rasmussen et al 2014;Bienkowska and Klofsten 2012). Arguably, the creation of a spin-off venture is an inherently uncertain endeavor that easily can be ignored among other activities and demands in the university.…”

How human capital interacts with the early development of academic spin-offs

“…Thirdly, academia has responded to these two challenges by making commercialisation of their research output the third pillar of their mission (in addition to the two pillars of research and teaching ;Etzkowitz 1998;Leydesdorff 2000;Rasmussen et al 2006), by increasing their efforts in entrepreneurship education and training, and by developing the human capital for both students and researchers (Bienkowska and Klofsten 2012;Kuratko 2005;Etzkowitz and Klofsten 2005). Therefore, from both management and policy perspective, it is necessary to repeatedly study human capital, as this is a crucial factor in the increasing importance of the relation between individual capabilities and new venture outcomes.…”