Universities as Sources of Business: Entrepreneurship and Doctoral Studies

Universities are called upon to contribute to economic development; work on education, patenting, licensing, and support in the spin-off of scientists is a way of doing this. In this scenario, the research aims to investigate the entrepreneurial potential in scientific and technical Ph.D. students. The results highlight that doctoral courses do not provide dedicated entrepreneurship training and that Ph.D. students need to be encouraged to improve their entrepreneurial competences or, at least, to think about an entrepreneurial future, in order to resemble colleagues who are already entrepreneurs. Institutional and policy roles in creating a model of entrepreneurship education are also underlined