Resumo

Entrepreneurship is not a function or an outcome of simple efforts. It requires a regular and permanent attitude as part of an entrepreneur´s personality. A growing literature has shown the interest of studying the role of personality traits and entrepreneurship and some studies provide evidence that entrepreneurs differ from managers in terms of personality.

This study is of a qualitative and quantitative descriptive/exploratory nature. A survey was carried out among 336 master's and doctoral students in the areas of science and engineering at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2019 to assess the relation between personality traits and entrepreneurial intentionThe homogeneity in the sample in terms of certain attributes played in favour of studying the effect of personality traits on entrepreneurial intent.

There is a growing concern about fostering entrepreneurial skills among students in Portugal as entrepreneurship by opportunity due to innovations promotes country growth and development. Thus, the aim of this research is to deepen our understanding of how personality traits and individual characteristics influence entrepreneurial intent, which is the beginning of the entrepreneurial process, for science and technology graduate students. The intention to become an entrepreneur is widely seen as the first critical step in the process of becoming an entrepreneur.

The current research makes three important contributions to the literature and it can give some lights on how to foster entrepreneurial intent. First, it deepens our theoretical understanding of the processes that personality differences and demographic individual characteristics may help distinguish the ones that want to be entrepreneurs from the ones that do not have entrepreneurial intent. Second, it can give some clues on how to foster entrepreneurial intent in an academic environment. And third, it analysis other variables as gender and income and entrepreneurial intent.

Extraversion (R=0,199), consciousness (R=0,151) and openness to experience (R=0,114) are positively correlated with entrepreneurial intent and significant. As expected, emotional stability and agreeableness have positive and negative correlations with entrepreneurial intent respectively but are not statistically significant. In terms of individual characteristics, gender is negatively correlated with entrepreneurial intent (R= - 0,121) and significant which means that women have lower entrepreneurial intent than men. Income is also positively correlated with entrepreneurial income.

Personality traits as extraversion, consciousness and openness to experience being related to entrepreneurial intent can be developed and fostered by entrepreneurial education which might impact in having a rise in entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurship by opportunity, which due to innovations promotes country growth and development. The differences in male and female entrepreneurial intentions also have policy implications: imparting the specific business skills associated with entrepreneurship may be the most potent levers to increase female and total entrepreneurship across countries.