What develops academic entrepreneurship? Case study on Japanese scientists

This paper empirically analyzed an original database containing career path information on more than 500 University of Tokyo (UoT) scientists. It indicated that overseas experiences have a positive and significant correlation... [ view full abstract ]

This paper empirically analyzed an original database containing career path information on more than 500 University of Tokyo (UoT) scientists. It indicated that overseas experiences have a positive and significant correlation with academic entrepreneurship. However, business experiences in the early stages of a scientist’s career path do not exhibit such correlation. This demonstrates the counter-intuitive fact that a working experience in the business sector does not develop academic entrepreneurship, which is almost synonymous with “new business creation.”
For further investigation, the study identified UoT scientists trained by overseas universities and categorized them as “sci.-Int’l.” Additionally, it selected and classified UoT scientists with business experiences as “sci.-Biz.” A closer examination showed that a very small number of scientists simultaneously belong to both categories. This suggests that a scientist trained by an overseas university lacks business experience; however, on the contrary, a scientist with business experience is unlikely to have overseas training. Combining these points, this paper concludes that academic entrepreneurship is more likely to be developed by “broader skills” incubated through overseas training than “narrowly focused skills” acquired through business experiences.