Pursuing Hybrid Entrepreneurship in Academia : A study about identifying influencing factors correlated to academic entrepreneurship

Sammanfattning: Hybrid entrepreneurship is a relatively new term referring to someone who want to try out his or hers business idea and entrepreneurial skill while still remaining at their wage-work in order to reduce their personal financial risk. In the academia this is quite a usual phenomenon where researchers and other academic personnel develop new ventures based on the research they are working on. This is largely possible due to something called the teachers exemption. What it means is that the intellectual properties invented by the researchers are fully owned by themselves. Another reason is that the individuals at the academia have permission to have secondary employments. As long as it is not competing with the university’s functions, the people who work in the academic have the possibility to pursue other interests on the side if they want to. However with all these opportunities and all, why are there not more entrepreneurs out there, coming from the academia? And what are the factors influencing the choice of pursuing hybrid entrepreneurship? From what we can tell there is a satisfaction among these individuals in their work. They have all the possibilities in the world to utilize their research and commit to the business activities. Yet many of the researchers are lacking in entrepreneurial abilities causing lots of valuable research to wait too long until it is being commercialized causing it to lose potential revenue. There is a wish and suggestion that more entrepreneurial education is given to not only researcher perhaps, but also every educational program. The academic environment is the perfect place to explore ones entrepreneurial interest and it should be the university’s responsibility to nurture it no matter what program you are attending or what position you are occupying. This could encourage people to pursue their dreams or at least learn the importance of critical assessment of your environment in order to find entrepreneurial opportunities. What we have concluded in this study is that hybrid entrepreneurship is a good method for someone who wishes to lower their financial risks when developing their own business. The method is already unconsciously used by researchers at universities to some extent and we suggest that the universities become more active in trying to encourage more of this. Researchers have probably the best conditions to apply this strategy as they have the teachers exemption to give them all the rights to their intellectual property. The university also have good connections to incubators that can help these researchers with initial funds and knowledge to start up their new venture.