Regional Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Biotech Industry: Exploring the Transition from Award-Winning Nascent Entrepreneurs to Real Start-Ups

摘要

Knowledge of factors that determine the transition from nascent entrepreneurship to real entrepreneurship is of major importance for policies aiming to stimulate start-ups effectively. Scholars have concentrated mainly on person-specific factors to explain transition probabilities, and environmental characteristics have been relatively neglected. Given that entrepreneurship is a strongly localized phenomenon, this paper argues that regional entrepreneurial opportunities are a driving force behind the transition from nascent entrepreneurship to new venture creation. Based on unique data from 103 nascent entrepreneurs in the German biotechnology industry, we empirically assess the importance of regional entrepreneurial opportunities for transition probabilities. Further, we introduce a new approach to measure nascent entrepreneurship by capturing details of individuals who participate actively in start-up competitions and have won at least one of these. Controlling for technology and individual characteristics, we find strong support for our hypotheses relating to the significant impact of general regional opportunities, specific regional opportunities and the entrepreneurial environment on the probability of transition from award-winning nascent entrepreneurs to real start-ups.