Student Entrepreneurship: Methodological Challenges and Research: Opportunities for the Entrepreneurship Field

Student entrepreneurship, defined as new venture creation by university students and recent graduates has recently attracted growing attention by entrepreneurship scholars. This setting can offer valuable contributions to several debates permeating the entrepreneurship community, such as the interplay between agency and context in entrepreneurship and the decision-making of nascent entrepreneurs. Yet, there are several conceptual as well as methodological challenges that need to be addressed in order to tap the full potential of student entrepreneurship research for the broader entrepreneurship community. For example, we need more theoretical development about different manifestations of student entrepreneurship and about the processes leading to student entrepreneurship and its impact. Additionally, the lack of comprehensive data collections of the entrepreneurial activities undertaken by university students and recent graduates jeopardizes our understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems and of the role of context as entrepreneurship enabler. Departing from these premises, the goal of this PDW is to host a set of esteemed panelists that will illustrate the main conceptual and methodological challenges that scholars need to be aware of in order to study student entrepreneurship, as well as the opportunities that research on student entrepreneurship can offer to the entrepreneurship and the broader management community. The PDW will also host a very interactive session, in which known scholars of the field will mentor authors interested to develop a paper on student entrepreneurship.