Student Entrepreneurship: Reflections and Future Avenues for Research

Student entrepreneurship has been booming over the past two decades and has bypassed academic spin-offs both in numbers and performance. Despite the importance of the phenomenon, we know still relatively little about how the process of student entrepreneurship differs from other forms of entrepreneurship. Most studies have focused on the antecedents of students becoming an entrepreneur at different levels of analysis. A rare study compared whether the ventures they create outperform the average venture or academic spin-offs more specifically and a few studies focus on the circumstances that surround student entrepreneurs such as a lack of resources, low opportunity costs and little prior experience. This monograph aims to provide a systematic literature review on the subject and tries to provide some provocative lines of thinking about theory extension which might be studied in the setting of student entrepreneurs. Against the backdrop of resource scarcity, lack of prior knowledge to identify opportunities, up to date technical skills and an open mindset not hindered by such priors, student entrepreneurs offer a great opportunity to extend, challenge or change received insights derived from the classic view on entrepreneurship theory.