202410021554

• Source: [[literature/ @teixeira2016 Academic entrepreneurship in life sciences: the case of a moderate innovator country | @teixeira2016 Academic entrepreneurship in life sciences: the case of a moderate innovator country ]]
• Tags: #scipreneur #portugal #life-science #entrepreneurs

The most interesting aspect is trying to define the " Index of Entrepreneurial Activity " and out of a series of factors, which ones can better predict the outcome.

The biggest blindspot is that they performed a survey sending e-mails to university employees. Which means, any entrepreneurial activity carried on by former employees (like a PhD or a Postdoc) will not appear counted.

Secondly, instead of scanning the patent database and draw conclusions from there, they ask people if they've been engaged in patenting activities. As a methodological approach is not robust enough (they could have quantified their response bias, for example.)

Nevertheless, the conclusions they can draw (even if from a sample which is not statistically relevant, less than 10% of respondents have some entrepreneurial activity, which is just 20 participants) is that almost no studied parameter is a clear indicator of activity. Gender has a low correlation, laboratory size es not very significant. Also age is not that predictive.

The biggest correlative factor is the number of engagements with industry. Which points to a clear policy that can be taken to increase entrepreneurial activity in academia: enhance private/public partnerships in which academics are exposed to the problems of industry.

"Entrepreneurship is within everyone's reach, but embraced by very few"