This paper explores how early career biotechnology researchers develop entrepreneurial competences through participation in a bespoke entrepreneurship education competition and whether this affects their longer-term entrepreneurial actions. Specifically, we discuss the pedagogy and evaluate the short- and long-term impact of a long-running entrepreneurship competition, where biotechnology doctoral and postdoctoral researchers address societal and environmental challenges through hypothetical new venture creation. We present evidence regarding the efficacy of this experiential education, where online mentoring is blended with a team-based residential competition utilising inspirational speakers, practitioner support and peer learning in encouraging ECRs to consider commercialising their research. We conclude that long-term entrepreneurial career outcomes can be fostered through tailored short-term interventions.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship | SET | STEM | Entrepreneurship education | Evaluation | Commercialisation | Biotechnology | careers

Digital technologies have nowadays a significant impact on how new business ventures are imagined and created. The arising technology paradigm is leveraging the potential of collaboration and collective intelligence to design and launch more robust and sustainable entrepreneurial initiatives. However, although the topic of digital entrepreneurship is relevant and timely, there is a limited literature discussion on the real impact of digital technologies and collaboration on the entrepreneurial process. Further research is needed to describe the nature and characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem enabled by the new socio-technical paradigm. Based on extant literature, this article proposes a definition of digital entrepreneurship ecosystem by highlighting the integrated digital-output and digital-environment perspectives. A collective intelligence approach is then adopted to define a descriptive framework and identify the distinguishing genes of a digital entrepreneurship ecosystem. Four dimensions associated to digital actors (who), digital activities (what), digital motivations (why), and digital organization (how) are defined and discussed. The framework was also applied to describe 9 real cases of companies and initiatives, which are analyzed as digital entrepreneurship ecosystems along the four key dimensions presented. The article ends with a discussion about the results and a research agenda for future studies.
Keywords: Collective intelligence | Digital entrepreneurship | Digital technologies | Entrepreneurial process | Ecosystem | Framework

Policymakers in developing countries increasingly see science, technology, and innovation (STI) as an avenue for meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs), with STI-based startups as a key part of these efforts. Market failures call for government interventions in supporting STI for SDGs and publicly-funded incubators can potentially fulfil this role. Using the specific case of India, we examine how publicly-funded incubators could contribute to strengthening STI-based entrepreneurship. Indias STI policy and its links to societal goals span multiple decades—but since 2015 these goals became formally organized around the SDGs. We examine why STI-based incubators were created under different policy priorities before 2015, the role of public agencies in implementing these policies, and how some incubators were particularly effective in addressing the societal challenges that can now be mapped to SDGs. We find that effective incubation for supporting STI-based entrepreneurship to meet societal goals extended beyond traditional incubation activities. For STI-based incubators to be effective, policymakers must strengthen the ‘incubation system’. This involves incorporating targeted SDGs in specific incubator goals, promoting coordination between existing incubator programs, developing a performance monitoring system, and finally, extending extensive capacity building at multiple levels including for incubator managers and for broader STI in the country.
Keywords: Science technology and innovation | developing countries | entrepreneurship | incubators | public policy | sustainable development goals | science policy

This paper reviews the Academic Entrepreneurship literature according to the emergence of powerful Digital technologies, providing an overview of the state of research and outlining a future research agenda about Digital Academic Entrepreneurship. One hundred and sixty-five journal papers were initially extracted from Scopus and their content was analysed for the paper selection process by two researchers in parallel, plus a third one in case of uncertainty. Finally, fifty-nine papers dealing with digital academic entrepreneurship and published in a variety of academic journals have been analyzed through a content and a bibliometric analysis. Findings show that literature on Digital Academic Entrepreneurship is really scant and dominated by unrelated research. Content analysis provides the emergence of four major research streams: 1) Digital Technologies for Entrepreneurship Education; 2) The “maker space movement” for Academic Entrepreneurship; 3) Digital tech- nologies for discovering entrepreneurial opportunities; 4) Creating entrepreneurial competences in the Digital “University-based” Entrepreneurial ecosystems. The paper presents the first attempt to provide a comprehensive structured literature review of the disruptive role of digital transformation for the Academic Entrepreneurship. Despite the growing literature on Digital Entrepreneurship, this research area is still fragmented and under- theorized. More systematic and holistic studies, considering both the technological, economic and the social aspects of Academic Entrepreneurship are required.
Keywords: Academic entrepreneurship | Bibliometric analysis | Digital technologies | Digital academic entrepreneurship | Digital transformation | Literature review | Software R | VOSviewer