Finding and fostering latent entrepreneurial tendencies in universities

Abstract

The environment within the university is exceedingly beneficial to support start-ups and entrepreneurs as they begin. This can be attributed due to low costs of operation, minimal obstacles of setting up ventures and the university administration contribute by cultivating potential entrepreneurs as part of their program. Various studies and statistical analyses have indicated that Finland is one of the best countries in regard with the number of R&D activities and R&D investments per capita in the world (2nd rank among 65 countries, in 2015). Besides, in regard with entrepreneurship infrastructures, again, they have very high ranks. However, looking at tendencies for entrepreneurship and fear of failure among university students, the level of performance has been very low (ranked 44). The current thesis is trying to find out what is the most appropriate strategy for Finnish universities’ entrepreneurship programmes so that they can foster the entrepreneurial tendencies amongst the academic researchers. In this process, the entrepreneurship principals and their connection to academic R&D is studied. Besides, the successful process of spinning off university start-ups and the structure of entrepreneurship fostering programmes in universities are analyzed. Furthermore, through a series of interviews, the major entrepreneurial fostering practices in Finnish universities are highlighted and described. This gives the researcher the possibility to evaluate the effectiveness of current approaches/strategies. Drawing a conclusion out of the put forward detail it comes to the point that although most of Finnish academic entrepreneurship programmes providing usual services such as training, professional support, and finances, they have not been successful in growing the rate of entrepreneurship intentions among university researchers. In fact, what is needed to be considered in these programmes more than anything is paying attention to services which are more attractive for the customers (researchers). In other words, taking a pull approach in a way that instead of providing services in which barely can researchers be found to be interested, entrepreneurship programs should try to provide academic researchers with services/facilities which might be of their interest such as inviting successful entrepreneurs with similar background as guest speakers to universities to tell stories about their journey as a researcher and an entrepreneur.