Entrepreneurship education and firm creation

ABSTRACT

Many studies show that entrepreneurial education has a positive impact on and reinforces entrepreneurial intentions. However, entrepreneurial intentions are not firm formation. People who intend to become entrepreneurs will not necessarily establish firms. By using a large original dataset, this paper examines the impact of different kinds of academic and professional entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship. The results indicate that in comparison with no entrepreneurship education at all, entrepreneurship education courses do have a positive impact on entrepreneurship in general and student entrepreneurship in particular. In addition, a combination of entrepreneurship education from different organizations, such as government agencies, incubators/accelerators and universities, promotes the establishment of high-technology firms.

KEYWORDS:

• universities
• students
• entrepreneurship
• ecosystem

JEL:

• I21
• I23
• 125

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank Vivek Goel and Stephanie Roy for their insights and support. Mackenzie Rice provided valuable research assistance throughout the project. The usual disclaimers apply.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Studies indicate that personal characteristics and a supporting environment impact the propensity to become an entrepreneur (Krueger et al., 2000).

2. The Growing America Through Entrepreneurship (GATE) programme was administered by the Small Business Administration in the United States.

3. The definition of high-tech industries follows Lamb and Seddo (2016). Using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code (three digit), the following subsectors are considered as high-tech: 336 (Transportation equipment manufacturing); 541 (Professional, scientific and technical services); 325 (Chemical manufacturing); 334 (Computer and electronic product manufacturing); 417 (Machinery, equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers); 511 (Publishing industries except internet); 517 (Telecommunications); 518 (Data processing, hosting and related services); and 333 (Machinery manufacturing).

4. For example, 40s refers to the ages 40–49 years and 30s to ages 30–39 years.

5. To examine the relationship between education and firm creation, we use a subsample of our data and focus on the 678 respondents who have founded firms previously. As the survey is sent to University of Toronto alumni, we show the role of graduates in local economic development by focusing on Ontario education and Ontario firms.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge financial support from the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation (OVPRI), the University of Toronto, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) partnership grant: Partnership for the Organization of Innovation and New Technologies (4POINT0) [grant numbers 895-2018-1006 and 435-2019-0111].