?
Effects of University Research Exposure on Young Company Behavior and Performance
The number of university graduates is continuously raising for many years creating an additional supply of highly qualified labor which doesn’t always meet respective demand thus can’t be absorbed fully. This holds especially true for Ph.Ds of which ever more are entering the labor market although the number of academic positions remains stable and also businesses have limited capacities for Ph.Ds. What follows is that entrepreneurial activities become a serious option for tertiary graduates. Namely Ph.D. graduates engaged in establishing companies by means
of using state of the art scientific knowledge which they developed at universities thus generating substantial impact of university produced knowledge on the economy and the broader society. Specifically the cognitive base and the founders’ educational background is an important determinant for the success and impact of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship in general and academic entrepreneurship in particular. The chapter introduces a broader definition of academic entrepreneurship and investigates whether new ventures founded by Ph.D. holders exhibit different characteristics and/or different behavior patterns compared to the rest of the firms established in the same period in Europe.