Guest editorial

Abstract

PurposeThis paper examines and discusses the need for micro-level analyses of academic entrepreneurship and outlines a micro-level research agenda for the study of academic entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approachBased on a review of academic literature on academic entrepreneurship, this study focuses on individual actors and suggests some future research agendas.FindingsThe authors highlight that more studies dealing with academic entrepreneurship need to take a micro-level perspective, thereby outline several fruitful avenues of research: (1) star scientists and principal investigators, (2) TTO professionals, (3) graduate entrepreneurs, (4) university administrators, (5) policy makers and funders as well as (6) micro-level organisational routines.Practical implicationsThis paper derives three main implications for management practice and policy. First, there is a real need to develop the managerial skills, competencies and capabilities of scientists and individuals. Second, policy makers need to ensure the necessary resources to pursue a paradigm shift towards more entrepreneurial thinking and action and create adequate incentives. Third, firms need to offer support and guidance on how to best commercialise and transfer scientific knowledge and ideally complement support structures of universities and research institutes.Originality/valueThis paper provides an organising framework for the study of micro-level academic entrepreneurship and emphasises the need to focus further on individual actors and how their actions, behaviours and approaches contribute to academic entrepreneurship in different institutional, environmental and cultural contexts.

A Systematic Literature Review of Individual Predictors on Internet Entrepreneurial Ventures among Academics

“…Of the thirty-five articles, six studies were conducted in China (Guo et al 2019;Li et al 2020;Shi et al 2020;Wang et al 2021), four in Europe (Goethner et al 2012;Schaeffer & Matt 2016, Davey & Galan-Muros 2020, Blaese et al 2021, 3 studies in Africa (Adelowo & Surujlal 2020;Eniola 2020;Urban & Gamata 2020), two in the UK (Abreu & Grinevich 2013;Abreu & Grinevich 2017), two in the US (Blair & Shaver 2020;Cadenas et al 2020), Iraq (Halbusi et al 2022), and Taiwan (Chang et al 2020). Meanwhile as many as sixteen studies (Kasouf et al 2015;Wadhwani et al 2017;Balven et al 2018;Hayter et al 2018;Hmieleski & Powell 2018;Miller et al 2018;Qian et al 2018;Xia et al 2018;Newman et al 2019;Cunningham & Menter 2020;Neves & Brito 2020;Oppong et al 2020;Secundo et al 2020;Hayter et al 2021;Bachmann et al 2021;Garcez et al 2022) did not state the country. Wang et al 2021;Halbusi et al 2022), six studies are literature reviews (Kasouf et al2015;Wadhwani et al 2017;Hayter et al 2018;Hmieleski & Powell 2018;…”

“…Meanwhile as many as sixteen studies (Kasouf et al 2015;Wadhwani et al 2017;Balven et al 2018;Hayter et al 2018;Hmieleski & Powell 2018;Miller et al 2018;Qian et al 2018;Xia et al 2018;Newman et al 2019;Cunningham & Menter 2020;Neves & Brito 2020;Oppong et al 2020;Secundo et al 2020;Hayter et al 2021;Bachmann et al 2021;Garcez et al 2022) did not state the country. Wang et al 2021;Halbusi et al 2022), six studies are literature reviews (Kasouf et al2015;Wadhwani et al 2017;Hayter et al 2018;Hmieleski & Powell 2018;Cunningham & Menter 2020;Hayter et al 2021), 5 studies conducted a systematic literature review (Miller et al 2018;Newman et al 2019;Neves & Brito 2020;Secundo et al 2020;Garcez et al 2022), two studies are empirical studies (Balven et al 2018;Qian et al 2018), 1 study is a conceptual paper (Xia et al 2018), and 1 study focused on qualitative analysis (Oppong et al 2020). When grouped by publication range 2012-2022, one article was published in 2012 (Goethner et al 2012), 1 article in 2013 (Abreu & Grinevich 2013), no articles in 2014, one article in 2015 (Kasouf et al 2015), 1 article in 2016 (Schaeffer & Matt 2016), two articles in 2017 …”

“…Higher education plays an important part in introducing and encouraging student interest in entrepreneurship. As a result, entrepreneurship education has experienced rapid development around the world (Adelowo & Surujlal 2020;Cunningham & Menter 2020). Entrepreneurship education can facilitate the transfer of knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to create new sustainable businesses (Cadenas et al 2020).…”

“…Universities have a significant role in creating a knowledge-based economy during the Industry 4.0 era (Klofsten et al 2019) and generating knowledge and promoting innovation in the field of entrepreneurship (Schaeffer & Matt 2016;Xia et al 2018). Many universities have developed policies, systems, and procedures to identify scientific discoveries made by their faculty and turn them into real technology that can be commercialized through licensing or through the formation of companies, such as technology transfer offices and startup incubators (Cunningham & Menter 2020;Urban & Gamata 2020).…”

Entrepreneurship in and around academia: evidence from Russia

“…Meantime, the mixed embeddedness approach (Wigren-Kristofersen et al ., 2019), exploring entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial opportunities in the academia within the wider socio-cultural, institutional and regulatory contexts and shapes a holistic understanding of entrepreneurship as something embedded in a “myriad of contexts” (Högberg and Mitchell, 2022), is rarely presented in the literature on academic entrepreneurship in non-Western contexts. But the interplay of agencies (Mosey and Wright, 2007; Kenney and Patton, 2009; Albats et al ., 2018; Balven et al ., 2018; Cunningham and O'Reilly, 2018; Cunningham and Menter, 2020), and formal and informal norms and rules enabling or preventing academic staff from entrepreneurship (Braunerhjelm, 2007; Huyghe and Knockaert, 2015) as well as ecosystems on the macro-level (Hayter et al ., 2018) is required for an understanding of real developments there. For instance, only the mixed embeddedness provides an explanation of a paradox of a moderate entrepreneurial activity in Russia, having an outstanding level of human capital, compared with established and developing market economies (Szerb and Trumbull, 2018, Figure 5).…”