Why Do Life Scientists Decide to Become Entrepreneurs? The Role of Motivations

The linkage between entrepreneurial ideas and actions continues to be central to the entrepreneurship debate. However, the possible implications of the various entrepreneurial motivations on the process are still largely understudied. On this ground, our study aims to contextualize the theoretical model linking the entrepreneurial intentions, the motivations, and the actions, with particular reference to the academic entrepreneurship within the Life Sciences. We use the QCA set-theoretic method to process the data gathered among 21 scholars, active in the life sciences context. We carry out the analysis in two steps. The first step demonstrates that the negation of behavioral beliefs, or the negation of the normative beliefs together with the negation of the control beliefs, are two sufficient conditions for the Entrepreneurial intentions to occur. Moreover, we find that the entrepreneurial intentions and the extrinsic motivations may lead to the entrepreneurial actions. Our findings offer interesting insights on the whole of the phenomenon, by revealing that the reference to specific contexts may well determine implications that differ from those already detected in the literature.