Resumo

While there is an increasing interest in ways to foster scientific academic entrepreneurship (usually done by faculty and graduate students), universities also serve as a positive environment for student entrepreneurship training, knowledge sharing, testing ideas and learning that often incubates new high impact businesses. So far, the importance of student entrepreneurship has received far less attention than it likely deserves.

The purpose of this paper is analyze this “hidden side” of academic entrepreneurship and identify its determinants in Brazil. We ask the following question: what are the determinants of student entrepreneurship in Brazil?

Siegel and Wright (2015) argue that the study of academic entrepreneurship should go beyond direct technology and knowledge transfer to encompass indirect aspects such as University education and research that lead indirectly to entrepreneurial activities, start-ups and spin-offs. According to Grimaldi et al. (2016, p. 1047), “one of the least recognized and inadvertent roles of universities in ‘encouraging’ entrepreneurship is providing a protected environment where students can experiment with new ideas and follow their passions”.

Using a dataset comprehending 2230 college and university students from 70 different institutions across the country we develop 5 Probit models to identify impacts related to individual traits and systemic conditions on five dimensions of interest: entrepreneurial activity, potential entrepreneurs, high-impact entrepreneurship, serial entrepreneurship and innovation content in student’ new ventures.

This research has addressed the issue of determinants of student entrepreneurship in the context of Brazilian universities. A rather complete picture of the dynamics behind entrepreneurial activity, potential entrepreneurship, high-impact entrepreneurship, serial entrepreneurship and innovation in small ventures has been drawn. Several dimensions of interest concerning students’ individual traits and systemic aspects were evaluated. Our research has addressed in-depth the dynamics of one of these components: academic institutions.

Our findings strongly suggest, as per the structure of our econometric models, student entrepreneurship seems to be a rather stochastic phenomenon in Brazil. A direct implication of this perspective concerns the incipient nature of the idea of entrepreneurial systems in this particular country. The role of high-quality universities has also been underscored as a key ingredient in the generation of innovation-driven new companies arising from the academic context

Grimaldi, R., Kenney, M., Siegel, D., & Wright, M. (2011). 30 years after Bayh–Dole: Reassessing academic entrepreneurship. Research Policy, 40(8), 1045-1057. Jansen, S., van de Zande, T., Brinkkemper, S., Stam, E., & Varma, V. (2015). How education, stimulation, and incubation encourage student entrepreneurship: Observations from MIT, IIIT, and Utrecht University. The International Journal of Management Education, 13(2), 170-181. Siegel, D., & Wright, M. (2015). Academic Entrepreneurship: Time for a Rethink? British Journal of Management, 26(4), 582-595.