Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Skills and Their Influence on the Entrepreneurial Intention of Academics

Abstract

The promotion of academic entrepreneurship through the creation of university spin-offs (USOs) as a transfer system has been enhanced during the last two decades. This commitment of universities and public policy makers has been based mainly on the use of investments of public funds in universities and the capacity for such investments to create employment and economic growth. In this sense, entrepreneurial skills are one of the strongest determinants of intention. For this reason, the present study proposes the use of the paradigm known as Big Five, which proposes as personality variables those recognized by the acronym OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) to recognize if they are determinants of entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial intent, all through the application of Theory Planed Behavior (TPB). To study the influence of entrepreneurial skills, a self-administrated questionnaire was sent to more than 33,000 Spanish academics. The responses yielded a sample size of 799. The results show that entrepreneurial skills are the prime determinants of attitude and perceived control, and attitude is the decisive factor that determines the intention to go into business. Therefore, investment in training and the cultivation of skills and attitudes constitute the most relevant factors for achieving an increase in the creation of USOs.