Entrepreneurial Intent and Entrepreneurial Commitment of young researchers

The creation of an academic spin-off represents one of the ways to implement the technology transfer process from university to firms. Although in Italy the preference for this form of valorization of scientific research has increased in recent years (Netval 2008), the gap compared with the main EU countries remains wide. In our view, the main problem related to the development of academic spin-offs, concerns the concept of entrepreneurial commitment (Mises 1949; Baumol 1990), here understood as a person dedicated to scientific research desiring to create a new venture based on the results of such research. According to Vohora et al. (2004) entrepreneurial commitment should be seen as a different concept from entrepreneurial intention which could be considered as the desire of a person to start a new business. In the specific domain of academic spin-offs, entrepreneurial intention therefore, could be intended as the desire of a person thus far devoted to scientific research, to create a new venture based on the results of such research. In our opinion, entrepreneurial intention has a role in the make-up of entrepreneurial commitment but other elements also have to be considered. Eventually, such elements may impede the formation of the entrepreneurial commitment of the would-be entrepreneur or at least weaken it. The article investigates the elements that qualify entrepreneurial intention (Bird 1988) and those which play a predominant role in developing the same into entrepreneurial commitment (Fini et al. 2008).