Encouraging entrepreneurship in university labs: Research activities, research outputs, and early doctorate careers

This paper investigates how the encouragement of entrepreneurship within university research labs relates with research activities, research outputs, and early doctorate careers. Utilizing a panel survey of 6,840 science & engineering doctoral students at 39 R1 research universities, this study shows that entrepreneurship is widely encouraged across university research labs, ranging from 54% in biomedical engineering to 18% in particle physics, while only a small share of labs openly discourage entrepreneurship, from approximately 3% in engineering to approximately 12% in the life sciences. Within fields, there is no difference between labs that encourage entrepreneurship and those that do not with respect to basic research activity and the number of publications. At the same time, labs that encourage entrepreneurship are significantly more likely to report invention disclosures, particularly in engineering where such labs are 41% more likely to disclose inventions. With respect to career pathways, PhDs students in labs that encourage entrepreneurship do not differ from other PhDs in their interest in academic careers, but they are 87% more likely to be interested in careers in entrepreneurship and 44% more likely to work in a startup after graduation. These results persist even when accounting for individuals’ pre-PhD interest in entrepreneurship and the encouragement of other non-academic industry careers.本研究探讨高校科研实验室内的创业扶持举措与科研活动、科研产出以及博士生早期职业发展之间的关联。本研究基于对39所R1级研究型大学的6840名理工科博士生开展的面板调查，结果显示：创业扶持举措在各高校科研实验室中普遍存在，占比跨度从生物医学工程领域的54%至粒子物理领域的18%不等；仅有少数实验室明确反对创业扶持，该比例范围为工程学领域的约3%至生命科学领域的约12%。在同一学科领域内，实施创业扶持的实验室与未开展该举措的实验室在基础科研活动与论文发表数量上并无显著差异。与此同时，推行创业扶持的实验室上报发明披露的概率显著更高，尤以工程学领域为甚，此类实验室的发明披露概率比其他实验室高出41%。在职业发展路径方面，参与创业扶持实验室的博士生与其他博士生对学术职业的兴趣并无二致，但前者对创业类职业的兴趣高出87%，毕业后进入初创企业工作的概率也高出44%。即便在控制个体博士生入学前的创业兴趣以及其他非学术产业职业扶持因素的影响后，上述研究结果依然成立。