Scientists as Entrepreneurs – Do They Fit the Stereotype?
Sally Davenport1 & Simon Brown2
1 Head of School
2 MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced
Victoria Management School
Materials & Nanotechnology
Victoria University of Wellington
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Po Box 600
University of Canterbury
Wellington 6140
Private Bag 4800
New Zealand
Christchurch 8140
Sally.davenport@vuw.ac.nz
New Zealand
Simon.brown@canterbury.ac.nz
In the charge to harness scientific research and innovation in order to enhance economic
productivity, researchers are often exhorted to think more commercially about their
research and to be more ‘entrepreneurial’. In this paper we describe a study of a Centre for
Research Excellence that was in the process of building its commercial profile to match the
reputation it had established for world-class basic research. Our interest was in the views of
the scientists regarding this push to be more entrepreneurial and to see whether there was
evidence that the scientists displayed traits and tendencies commonly associated with
entrepreneurs.
From the time of Schumpeter, entrepreneurs have been seen as a key force in economic
growth. An entrepreneur is usually thought of as a person who establishes a new
organisation but, in the academic literature, entrepreneurship is thought of more broadly as
the recognition, evaluation and pursuit of opportunity in diverse contexts (Shane &
Venkataraman, 2000). This latter definition could equally apply to the work of researchers
as they pursue opportunities in their scientific fields, a link that was possibly reflected in
Zucker and Darby’s (1996) study of the biotechnology industry, in which they found that
‘star scientists’ played a disproportionately significant role in the commercialization of
bioscience inventions. In a similar vein, Stuart and Ding (2006: 99) noted that “scientists
were more likely to become entrepreneurs when they worked in departments where
colleagues had previously made the transition”, particularly when the entrepreneurial
individuals were prestigious scientists. Yet the key role of the scientific researcher is rarely
the focal point of academic entrepreneurship studies (Jain, George & Maltrich, 2009).
Entrepreneurs are popularly characterised as being risk takers who are driven by the
challenge of creating something new. Thus high tolerances for risk and ambiguity are core
aspects of the stereotype of the entrepreneur. However, the literature regarding risk-taking
indicates that the reality is far more complex with many studies returning inconclusive
results. Whilst entrepreneurs tend to cognitively categorise business situations more
positively than others, their risk taking propensity is not significantly different (Brockhaus,
1980; Cools & Van den Broek, 2007; Palich & Bagby. 1999). As entrepreneurs tend to have
higher levels of self confidence than the general population (Kirkwood, 2009), it may be that
entrepreneurs perceive of themselves as better able to control or mitigate risk.
The research regarding ambiguity tolerance, however, is slightly more consistent.
Uncertainty is inherent in entrepreneurial activity (as it is in scientific research) precisely
because entrepreneurial individuals see and can create opportunity out of the ambiguity.
Many studies have identified that entrepreneurs have a higher ambiguity tolerance (Begly
and Boyd, 1993; Cools & Van den Broek, 2007), as measured by standard instruments such
as McLean’s (1993) MSTAT-1 survey instrument, although it cannot be said it is an infallible
distinguishing entrepreneurial trait. Ambiguity tolerance is not so much about a preference
for ambiguity, but as an acceptance of the presence of ambiguity and the risk associated
with it. Given scientific research is also characterised by uncertainty and ambiguity, it could
be postulated researchers as a group may also display higher ambiguity tolerance, which
may or may not lead to more interest in commercialization activities.
With this background, the project described in this paper, had the intent of
understanding how researchers in the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and
Nanotechnology (the Institute) perceived the risk associated with commercialization
activities, whether prior commercialization activities in the Institute influenced that
perception, and whether those that were more positive towards this activity displayed the
trait of higher ambiguity tolerance. At the time of the study, the Institute consisted of 41
Principal investigators (PIs - senior researchers funded by the Institute), 34 Associate
investigators (researchers who were either more junior in status or who were not able to be
full PIs due to administrative duties etc), 2 Affiliate researchers (researchers whose work
was slightly more peripheral to the core science but still of interest to the Institute), as well
as a similar number of post-doctoral researchers and PhD students (either full funded by the
Institute or supervised by PIs). In addition, the Institute was associated with three 3
companies that had been spun-out from its research activity, and the CEOs of these
companies were also included in the sample. The McLean MSTST-1 instrument and a short
email survey were first deployed, followed by face-to-face interviews.
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