"Unlocking entrepreneurial capacity is a difficult journey of personal recalibration"

Alf Farrell, 2021

Our mission

To inspire academics to initiate entrepreneurial intention and support them to entrepreneurial action.

Seed Funding

Support academic entrepreneurs to find funding by purposefully leveraging knowledge, skill and strategic relationships through coaching, mentoring, performance psychology, group workshops and self-directed learning.

Entrepreneurial Learning

Activate entrepreneurial action in identifying new knowledge that can be translated. Partnering and collaborating with multidisciplinary players within the university to generate and/or translate knowledge.

Research

Research, support postgraduates and publish to develop the field of academic entrepreneurship. Research and implement programmes supporting academic staff to expand professional influence and impact.

Coaching & Mentoring

Coaching academics and researchers (levels three and upwards) - supporting them to engage more fully with their innovative capacity.

Mentoring academics – supporting them to engage more confidently and with more skill on issues of research planning, seeking grant funding, managing the funding cycle, handling internal and external politics, etc.

ABSTRACT: Characteristics, enablers and barriers affecting entrepreneurial behaviour for academics in low and middle income countries: A scoping review.

Alfred Farrell, Witness Mapanga, Nombulelo Chitha, James Ashton and Maureen Joffe

(As published in Development South Africa, 22 January 2022)

In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, academics should enhance entrepreneurial capacity to leverage digital-based advances and knowledge capital to support academic economic growth. A scoping review based on the Joanna Briggs Institute’s guiding principles, using Krueger’s intention-based entrepreneurship model as the theoretical framework, was undertaken to determine the extent of the literature related to characteristics, attributes, behaviours, enablers, and barriers of academic entrepreneurship in Higher Education Institutions in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Twenty articles were identified and included. The most common academic entrepreneurial characteristics included hunger for success, desire for independence, innovation, creativity, futuristic thinking, and self-esteem. For entrepreneurship to flourish, donor support, strong regulatory systems, political and macroeconomic stability were necessary. Characteristics such as innovation, creativity and futuristic thinking were tied to academic entrepreneurship. Further research on enablers and barriers is suggested to guide academics in LMIC universities with their transition to entrepreneurship as their engagement with society develops.

Characteristics such as innovation, creativity and futuristic thinking are related to academic entrepreneurship by influencing the attitudes which directly affect entrepreneurial action. Role integration between HEI and the industry or prior industrial work experience have been found to be one of the behaviours that might activate academic entrepreneurship in LMIC. Research of the positive or negative impact of enablers or barriers is required to guide academics in incorporating entrepreneurship as HEI engagement with society progresses. Importantly, there is a need for the development of LMIC relevant intention-based theoretical frameworks (or refinement of existing models) that recognise the resource-poor environments within which the LMIC HEI and their academics operate, and the role they are required to play in addressing the impoverished socioeconomic circumstances within which they exist.

Conceptual model describing the academic’s transition to entrepreneurial action

Entrepreneurial Intention chart
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