The desire to start a business is perhaps slightly more widespread than the number of people who actually do.  The extreme unpredictability of startup life coupled with the harsh realities of life with responsibilities prompt many would-be entrepreneurs to take a more predictable career path.  This is especially so in countries where unemployment is low and therefore the chances of securing good work are high.

Nonetheless, new research from the University of Vaasa highlights how the entrepreneurial spirit within us is something that largely endures throughout our careers.

“Entrepreneurship would seem to lie deep in a person’s identity – even if an individual ends up in paid employment, the dream of entrepreneurship remains,” the researcher says. “Such longitudinal studies where the same persons are followed for nearly ten years are really rare in the field of entrepreneurship study.”

Desire for entrepreneurship

The research explores the development of entrepreneurial intentions, and the various factors that impact them during our life, while also investigating whether specific entrepreneurial education in our formative years can invoke a spirit of entrepreneurship that lasts a lifetime.

“Promoting entrepreneurship is a very important matter socially,” the researcher says.  “Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and general well-being. Students build their own professional identity during higher education studies, and therefore it is very important for higher education institutions to support students with intentions of becoming entrepreneurs.”

The research found that including entrepreneurship as part of higher education was crucial.  It found that our entrepreneurial intentions are typically formed by both our attitudes towards entrepreneurship and our belief in our ability to succeed as an entrepreneur.  Both of these, the author believes, can be bolstered during our student days.

What’s more, the researcher argues that this effort has a lasting impact, with the boost to our entrepreneurial intentions lasting long into our working lives.

“This is significant, because as a rule, entrepreneurial intentions decrease during higher education,” they explain. “At the graduation stage, intentions stabilize and remain almost at the same level in working life. For this reason, higher education studies are a particularly important period from the perspective of promoting entrepreneurship.”

Starting young

For this to work, however, the paper suggests that any entrepreneurial training require a proactive approach from the student, as purely lecture-based tuition does not seem to have the same effect.

As well as entrepreneurial training, the research suggests that role models also play a key role in our interest in entrepreneurship as we age.  This can come from our parents, for instance, but it’s also important that we have diverse sources of inspiration, as the paper highlights that men remain more likely to become entrepreneurs than women.

The availability of role models for women is perhaps especially important, as the paper finds less of an impact of entrepreneurship training on the likelihood of women starting a business.  Indeed, for men, such training generally provides a boost to their attitude towards entrepreneurship, whereas for women the impact is mainly on their belief in their own competence.

“It is important for higher education institutions to identify the students with high entrepreneurial intentions,” the author concludes. “They are likely to be future entrepreneurs, and the higher education institute can support this entrepreneurship process already during the studies.”