The Effects of Mentoring in Entrepreneurial Career Choice·

ABSTRACT
Mentorship programs are increasingly on the agenda for policymakers and
universities interested in fostering entrepreneurship. However, there are few
studies examining the causal effects of mentorship on potential entrepreneurs. I
investigate the impact of the type of mentorship on the likelihood that university
students will become entrepreneurs. I test whether being mentored by an
entrepreneur has a different impact in entrepreneurship education compared
with mentoring from a non-entrepreneur with relevant industry experience. I use
a longitudinal field experiment with a pre-test/post-test design where students in
an entrepreneurship class were randomly assigned to receive mentorship from
either entrepreneur or non-entrepreneur mentors.
To my knowledge, this is the first randomized trial of a mentoring program in
entrepreneurship. We find significant positive effects of mentorship, particularly
by certain types of mentors. However, the effects are not uniform among the
group of participating students. Results show that entrepreneur mentors have a
significant positive influence on the rate of entrepreneurship, with the greatest
influence on students with specific risk orientation and family backgrounds.
INTRODUCTION
Mentoring has become an essential factor in entrepreneurial success because
mentors can help entrepreneurs overcome setbacks they commonly face in the
early stages of their entrepreneurial ventures (e.g., Baron, 1998; Patzelt &
Shepherd, 2011). Despite its importance in helping entrepreneurs build a
profitable venture, the full potential of mentoring relationships is rarely
realized. At the same time, several recent surveys indicate that mentoring can
make a significant difference in education. For example, a Gallup survey of 30,000
students found that those who “had a mentor that encouraged their goals and
dreams” were “twice as likely to be engaged with their work and thriving in their
overall well-being”. However, while the general importance of mentoring for
entrepreneurial success is widely acknowledged, the success factors behind
mentoring has not been examined.
The goal is to help entrepreneurs, mentors and organizations supporting
mentorship programs understand the dynamics of successful mentorship
relationships. To accomplish this goal, the surveys and this report address several
topics.
 What is mentoring and what value does it contribute?
 What constitutes effective mentoring and who is qualified to be a mentor?
 What is really going on in these mentoring programs?
 How are they designed and how do they function?
 Who are the participants and how do they interact?
 What kinds of assumptions and expectations do the participants have?
 What are the critically important success factors that may contribute to
valuable outcomes?
 How can the mentoring process be further improved?
 How can mentoring be learned?
 How can entrepreneurs be trained so they can benefit more from
mentoring programs?
The definition of a mentor compared to an advisor or coach is important to
understand. The surveys provide definitions of each and ask respondents to select
what role they played or whether they believe they got advice, coaching and/or
mentoring. Coaching has become a popular term and is generally applied to
personal advising on career issues. Even CEOs today receive coaching on internal
and external communications, for example, on sensitivity to gender issues. Many
consultants now also advertise themselves as coaches/mentors for startups. Their
motivation is generally to work with a promising new venture and receive equity
as compensation. They are offering their experience and usually expert advice.
How are coaches different from mentors? Perhaps the distinction is not
important, but one way would be to describe a coach as someone who helps you
be “the best you can be”, while a mentor, in the context of a startup, helps you
“explore the unknown challenges of the entrepreneurial journey.”
To be effective as a mentor, common sense tells us this individual will need
specific personality traits and communication skills, beyond any industry
knowledge, expertise, or experience. A mentor will need, not only a growth
mindset (i.e., the belief that most abilities can be learned), but also a broad
professional background and true empathy. Mentors should care about their
mentees and not become a mentor primarily to benefit her/himself. Mentees will
feel this caring (or lack of it) and the relationship will be influenced. It is common
sense that mentees highly value people who they feel are “looking out” for them.
Likewise, mentors will value mentee relationships more if they feel that their
mentees care about their relationship and work to develop it.
A mentor need not and should not provide all the answers to questions a mentee
may ask. If the common objective of a mentoring relationship is to provide
opportunities for both mentors and mentees to grow (through learning), then
everyone’s energy and focus should be the issue of “How can we learn most
effectively?” Is it counter-intuitive to believe that the growth of the startup will
follow that of the entrepreneur and the team as a whole?
This leads to a working definition of the role of a mentor as someone who:
1) inspires curiosity
2) challenges assumptions and expectations (gives feedback)
3) guides through asking probing questions
4) is honest and direct about what he/she doesn’t know
5) is eager to learn, along with the mentee
This type of joint learning experience by mentor and mentee is a new challenge
for academia, industry and society, reflecting the importance and recent
emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship as drivers of economic growth.
Students often complain that their universities don’t offer practical, (hands-on,
action-based, experiential, applied) courses in entrepreneurship, and that many
courses are still taught in the traditional way of lectures and business cases.
Should universities provide more practical kinds of training? Increasingly, the
answer given by students (and their families) to this question is a resounding
“YES!” Entrepreneurship should not be taught in the conventional way.
The entrepreneurial journey is more akin to mountain climbing. A student can
learn about the tools and equipment, he or she can develop the muscle strength
and coordination that is needed, he or she can study detailed maps of Mount
Everest. But, will that mean he or she will be able to climb Everest, if he or she has
had no experience actually climbing smaller mountains? The sherpas of Everest
are famous because they know the mountain so well and they are intimately
familiar with the environment. Experienced mentors are more like Sherpas ––
guides who can read signs of impending storms, fragile rock surfaces, and other
impediments to success.
Literature on mentorship yields mixed results. Generally, studies have suggested
that
informal mentoring is more effective than formal programs and provides some
evidence that
mentorship can improve self-efficacy and leadership (Ragins, Cotton and Miller,
200l; Raabe and
Beehr, 2003). However, these studies have mainly focused on career
development within
organizations, leaving unexamined the question of whether the characteristics of
mentors
influence the subsequent career choices of mentees in making the transition from
conventional
careers (i.e. waged employment) to entrepreneurship (i.e. founding a venture as
an employer).
Our contribution in this paper theorizes as to the effects of mentorship
approaches on the
mentees’ choices between conventional careers and entrepreneurship. This paper
provides a
research model which offers a more optimal and better identified test of the
causal effects of
entrepreneur vs. non-entrepreneur mentors on mentees’ actual career decisions.
The research design has two key advantages:
First, we employ a randomized experiment where teams are assigned a mentor
type. The randomization allows us to control selection bias resulting from
mentors selecting teams and teams selecting mentors. Mentees more inclined
towards entrepreneurship might otherwise have matched with a certain type of
mentor, potentially resulting in bias in purely observational data. Second, the
design is longitudinal, in that we follow the mentees through graduation and for
years afterwards, enabling us to observe their actual career choices rather than
mere career intentions. We highlight two key findings. First, mentors with
entrepreneurial experience have a significant, positive impact on their mentees’
likelihood of founding or joining early stage startups. Second, this effect is
particularly strong for mentees who are less risk-averse and whose parents are
not entrepreneurs. From a ten-week course of mentorship, we find significantly
stronger effects on career decisions for mentees who were randomly assigned to
mentors who were former or current entrepreneurs.
LITERATURE ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION
While entrepreneurship education has proliferated, high quality research on the
subject is still nascent (Gorman et al. 1997). While many early studies were
descriptive (Vesper and Gartner 1997), recent work has begun to show a positive
link between entrepreneurial education and outcomes, such as attitudes and
intentions towards entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial activity (Fayolle et al.
2006; Tkachev and Kolvereid 1999; for exception, see Von Graevenitz, Harhoff,
and Weber, 2010). Initial results have suggested that entrepreneurship programs
encourage students to start businesses and increase their entrepreneurial self-
efficacy (McMullan et al., 2002; Gorman et al. 1997). Peterman and Kennedy
(2003) find that students in an enterprise education course who had weak ex-ante
entrepreneurial intentions had a stronger increase in those intentions than the
students with strong ex-ante intentions. Souitaris et al. (2007) find that a
semester-long entrepreneurship program resulted in an increase in
entrepreneurial intentions. Oosterbeek et al. (2010) use a differences-in-
differences framework to show that the effect of an entrepreneurship course on
students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills was insignificant, and the effect on
entrepreneurial intentions was negative. Von Graevenitz, Harhoff, and Weber
(2010) find that while the average effects of an entrepreneurship course were
negative on intentions, the effects were not uniform, with some students either
increasing or decreasing their entrepreneurial intentions. Their results are
consistent with students receiving informative signals about their entrepreneurial
aptitude. This literature generated significant insights and laid groundwork for
further analysis. Several scholars have observed the need for more work on the
impact of entrepreneurship education (sometimes called business “coaching”)
due to the preliminary state of knowledge (Weaver, Dickson and Solomon 2006;
Cumming and Fischer 2012). As von Graevenitz and colleagues (2010: p. 103)
write, “While entrepreneurship education has been introduced and promoted in
many countries and at many institutions of tertiary education, little is known at
this point about the effect of these courses. In particular, it is largely unknown
how the courses impact students’ willingness to engage in entrepreneurial activity
and what kind of learning processes are responsible for these effects. Instead, the
literature has focused on an analysis which studies
outcomes, but does not consider the causes or the path of learning.”
There are at least two limitations in the literature:
1) Research has predominantly focused on the impact of entrepreneurship
education on students’ entrepreneurial orientation, but not
whether their classroom knowledge is applied to real-world startup careers after
graduation;
2) In focusing on whether entrepreneurship education produces results, much of
this work neglects the great variation across such courses and programs. In
particular, little work that I am aware of has examined whether the type of
mentorship matters.
MENTORSHIP LITERATURE
Eby (2010: p. 505) defines mentorship as a “developmentally oriented
interpersonal relationship that is typically between a more experienced individual
(i.e., the mentor) and a less experienced individual (i.e., the protégé).” A number
of scholars and certainly numerous practitioners have noted the importance of
mentorship in promoting leader development and career opportunities (e.g.,
McCauley & Van Velsor, 2004; Srivastava 2013). In a sense, entrepreneurship is
new to the idea of mentorship within large companies. It is estimated that at
least a third or more of major companies have formal mentoring programs (Bragg
1989; Murray 1991). A small but growing literature on mentorship exists and has
been utilized by both psychologists and management scholars. This literature has
focused predominantly on the impact of career mentoring in large companies and
within academia. According to Kram’s mentor role theory (1985), mentors provide
two types of functions: career development in order to advance within the
organization, and psychosocial advancement, contributing to the protégé’s
personal growth and professional development. The literature has found that
receiving mentorship has been associated with positive career outcomes
(Scandura 1992; Srivastava 2013).
Yet, within the mentorship literature, there is debate on the effectiveness and
optimal format of formal mentorship programs. Prior work suggests that the most
effective mentoring relationships are those that occur organically via self-
selection within the organization, and formal programs compelling participation
are mostly ineffective (Johnson, 2007; Johnson & Anderson, 2010). For instance,
Ragins and Cotton (1999) find no differences in career outcome between non-
mentored and formally mentored individuals, but that informally mentored
individuals view their mentors as more effective and their mentees receive
greater compensation.
Formal mentorship was defined as assigned, intensive, regular meetings over a
short period of time (6 months to a year) versus informal mentoring, which was
self-selected, less frequent and longer-term (3-6 years).
Dreher and Ash (1990) find that individuals who received mentorship reportedly
had more promotions, higher incomes, and greater satisfaction with their
compensation than non-mentored individuals. Kram and Isabella (1985) find that
peers could provide an alternative to mentors in offering psychosocial and career
development benefits. Lester et al. (2011) ran a field experiment over six months
where one group received leadership mentoring and the other received a group-
based leadership education program. They found that the mentored group
resulted in higher levels of leadership self-efficacy and performance compared
with the educated group. The protégé’s preferences for feedback and trust in
their mentors were important moderators. Of the two mentorship functions,
advancement within the organization is less relevant to entrepreneurship. Both
career advancement and professional development increases the protégé’s
opportunity costs, potentially deterring entrepreneurship. While many of the
insights may apply to mentoring in entrepreneurial education, thus far the field
has not explored unique issues that arise in the context of mentorship for
entrepreneurship programs and courses. One drawback shared by much of the
prior literature on mentorship and on entrepreneurship education is the use of
observational data (one exception is Srivastava 2013).
This empirical drawback also limits the theoretical insights that are possible. With
purely observational data it is difficult to disentangle several competing
explanations on the observed effects of mentorship. For instance, there is a
selection process where mentors choose protégés and protégés choose which
mentors to approach. Those left without mentors may be less talented
or motivated individuals. It could also be that more talented mentors tend to pair
up with more talented protégés, inflating the effects of mentorship and making it
difficult to identify which characteristics of mentors or protégés are important.
Theoretically, both career and psychosocial development factors are then
conflated. The closest study to ours examined mentorship in the context of
academia and made different theoretical assessments. This experimental
approach shares a longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial approach. Blau and
colleagues (2010) find that female economists randomized to receive mentorship
(in this case, attending a two-day workshop to improve a paper with senior
faculty) experienced significant, positive career benefits (more grants and
publications) relative to a control group. While significant differences resulted
from such a short workshop is perhaps surprising, the authors find evidence that
mentorship relationships lasted well beyond the workshop.
To summarize, scholarship on the impact of mentorship on entrepreneurial
education has begun to make progress, but is still in its infancy. Mentors typically
do not work in the firm where the mentee is the founder, so the type of
mentorship to enable advancement in an organization is not applicable. Mixed
results and methodological limitations plague both streams of literature,
giving us little guidance on whether mentorship is effective in encouraging
entrepreneurship and if so, how and for whom. The proliferation of policies and
university programs providing mentorship in entrepreneurship education
highlights the importance of better understanding of the theory and phenomena
behind it. This is the gap that we seek to fill through a longitudinal, randomized
field experiment matching student with mentors.
THEORY DEVELOPMENT AND HYPOTHESES
Prior work has not systematically examined the influence of the type of mentor,
particularly how their prior career experiences may influence the effectiveness of
mentorship. Entrepreneurship scholars have shown that experienced
entrepreneurs raise money faster (Hsu, 2007) and generate greater firm growth
(Eesley and Roberts, 2012). Thus, we suggest that mentorship by former or
current entrepreneurs may have different effects from mentorship by
other types of professionals. Mentors who do not have direct entrepreneurship
experience may work in venture capital (VC) firms or as middle or upper level
managers in established organizations. Some VCs have previously been
entrepreneurs, and can thus be considered entrepreneur mentors. However, not
all VCs have direct entrepreneurial experience (and were not coded as
entrepreneur mentors) and it is this direct entrepreneurial experience that we
argue is important in mentoring potential entrepreneurs. Indeed, prior work finds
that VCs with previous startup experience are more likely to be active investors
(Bottazzi, Da Rin and Hellmann 2008) and have higher returns in their portfolios
(Zarutskie, 2010). In contrast, VCs with MBA degrees and general human capital
outside of startups have relatively lower performance in their portfolios.
Corporate managers and venture capitalists may be likely to have similar industry,
technology or market knowledge. They are also likely to have similar networks.
Compared with non-entrepreneur mentors, those with entrepreneurial
experience have seen with direct experience the steps (and missteps) in the firm
formation process. These are the elements that are missing or there to a lesser
extent in mentors who lack direct experience of starting a business. This
distinction allows us to better isolate the impact of these factors on the mentees.
By clarifying the potential roles of mentors in the transition to entrepreneurship,
it is helpful to outline the four main obstacles (resulting from information or
perception) that potential entrepreneurs face when making decisions about
starting a new venture.
These include:
1) stigma, or fear of failure,
2) concerns about entrepreneurial ability or self-efficacy,
3) general lack of information about entrepreneurial careers, and 4) lack of social
connections to resource providers in entrepreneurship. Compared with
conventional careers, entrepreneurship is a different, less well-understood type
of career experience and as a result is often not covered by conventional
career coaching or career centers at the university. As a consequence of this
difference in entrepreneurial career options, individuals are constrained by their
lack of information, resulting in ambivalence to the idea of starting a company.
Stigma, or fear of failure is the concern that if one creates a new venture and it
fails, then ones’ future career is ruined (Landier 2005; Simmons, Wiklund and
Levie 2013). Experienced entrepreneur-mentors may help their mentees to
understand that a failed venture is not the end of a career, but rather an
important part of their entrepreneurial training. Mentorship from an
entrepreneur can provide students with a greater level of security and inspiration.
It can be inspiring for students to hear how a business was created directly from
its founder, and can be more effective than being mentored by an employee or an
investor. Even the story of an unsuccessful business venture can offer students
inspiration, particularly if it was a bold idea, or the entrepreneur went on to
create other interesting ventures.
Entrepreneur mentors, especially serial entrepreneurs who have failed before,
can help their mentees reduce their fear of failure, because they can help them to
develop a more realistic assessment of the possible career choices in event of
venture failure (Nanda and Sorensen 2010:1117).
These factors tend to increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial activity on the
part of the mentee.
Second, concerns that an individual may have about their own ability or capacity
for entrepreneurship may hinder them from trying. Unlike many careers, there is
no straightforward way to develop your skills as an entrepreneur or discover
which skills are necessary without trying it (Lazear 2005). Experienced
entrepreneur-mentors can demonstrate to mentees that these necessary skills to
being a successful entrepreneur can be learned. In part, this inspiration comes
from the idea that the mentor is now going to share the ‘secrets’ of the startup
process with the mentee. Imparting information on the startup process from
someone who has been there and done it can increase the mentee’s confidence
in his or her own abilities, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Zhao, Seibert, & Hills,
2005), increasing the likelihood and level of success. The entrepreneurial mentor
can thus become a role model.
Third, is the important role that experienced entrepreneur-mentors play in
providing missing or tacit information about entrepreneurship as a career choice.
For more conventional careers such as investment banking or consulting, various
career services are available on campus and there are well-established routes for
people to follow. In conventional careers, students can be very clear about
professional criteria and their alternatives within the industry. However, such
guidelines are missing or unavailable in entrepreneurship, with most career
services and curriculums not set up to guide students to embrace a career in
entrepreneurship. Close interaction with experienced entrepreneur mentors may
play a particularly important role in alleviating this constraint.
In addition, mentoring, particularly by entrepreneur mentors provides the
mentee with behavioral information. Entrepreneur mentors are in a unique
position to acknowledge the challenges, long hours, marital strife, and other
difficulties associated with entrepreneurship.
They can also talk about the personal characteristics and behaviors necessary to
cope with these challenges. On the positive side, they can also speak directly to
the non-monetary rewards arising from entrepreneurship in terms of creating
innovation and change in an industry; solving real problems and having an impact.
Mentors of all types may help mentees to evaluate ideas, either by giving them
direct feedback or by suggesting courses of action or people to talk with.
Malmadier and Lerner (2013) find that MBA students at Harvard who were in
class sections with a higher proportion of former entrepreneurs were less likely to
start firms. They provide evidence consistent with the idea that former
entrepreneurs may be better able to identify weaknesses in new business ideas
and convince their classmates not to pursue them. Entrepreneur mentors might
play a similar role in discouraging low quality business ideas.
Finally, there is the lack of social connections to resources necessary for
entrepreneurship. Particularly students do not have prior coworkers or friends
who are angel investors, venture capitalists or startup lawyers. Beyond the stage
of brainstorming ideas, it is difficult for them to know whom to turn to for help in
gathering the initial resources necessary to get started. This is another constraint
for prospective entrepreneurs that experienced entrepreneur mentors
can be better positioned to alleviate. On balance, we expect entrepreneur
mentors to have a greater impact on addressing the constraints that potential
entrepreneurs face, thus, increasing the likelihood of their mentees engaging in
entrepreneurship.
Hypothesis 1. Mentorship by a former entrepreneur increases the likelihood of
engaging in entrepreneurship.
While we do not hypothesize about the direct effect of risk-aversion on
entrepreneurship, we do expect that influencing concerns about startup risk may
be one of the effects that entrepreneurial mentors have on their mentees. One
might expect that entrepreneur mentors cause mentees to be even more risk-
averse by pointing out all of the things that could go wrong in their startups, or
describing in detail the struggles and challenges they have had to endure.
However, most entrepreneurial mentors are likely to be those who have had
some degree of success in entrepreneurship, otherwise they would be less likely
to sign-on to mentor future entrepreneurs. This success is likely to do more to
reassure mentees that the risks are not so bad. By contrast, on-entrepreneur
mentors are individuals who in their own lives have decided to pursue safer
paths and have not become entrepreneurs. They are less likely to be able to
reassure their mentees about the risks of entrepreneurship.
The mentor effect may be expected to have a larger influence on the more risk-
averse mentees. Since risk-averse mentees might be interested in pursuing
entrepreneurship, yet their risk-aversion holds them back, anything that
contradicts the perceived risks is likely to affect them more strongly. On the other
hand, the risk-loving mentees may already be less concerned about risks, and may
be interested in entrepreneurship precisely because it appears risky. A reduction
in the risk perception due to an entrepreneur mentor is less likely to have an
influence on these individuals. If they are hesitating to become entrepreneurs,
then it is likely to be for reasons other than the riskiness of entrepreneurship.
Hypothesis 2a. The positive effect of mentorship by a former entrepreneur is
negatively moderated by risk propensity of the mentee. We may also expect that
entrepreneur mentorship will have a greater effect in encouraging those who are
low enough in risk-aversion that they are seriously considering entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs are generally thought to be more risk-loving than the general
population (Lucas 1978; Kihlstrom and Laffont 1979) and studies have proposed
that risk-averse individuals will choose the wage sector over entrepreneurship, as
the rewards for the latter are more variable and less certain than the former
(Iyigun and Owen 1998).
Even risk-loving individuals face obstacles in entering entrepreneurship. They may
lack the information about how to start a firm, where to locate resources and
how to reach customers.3 While the theoretical prediction has many empirical
Supports (e.g. De Wit 1993; Stewart and Roth 2001), there are also studies
showing no difference in risk attitudes between entrepreneurs and non-­­
entrepreneurs (Brockhaus 1980; Masters and Meier 1988; Miner and Raju 2004).
Yet some have shown that when measured in certain ways, entrepreneurs may
Be risk-­­takers (Sarasvathy, Simon and Lave 1998; Cramer, et al 2002; Holm,
Opper and Nee 2013). Individuals lower on uncertainty (risk) avoidance were
More likely to become entrepreneurs (McGrath, MacMillan and Scheinberg
1992). Wu and Knott (2006) find that the type of risk matters, specifically,
entrepreneurs are risk-­­averse in terms of market uncertainty,
But risk-­­loving with respect to uncertainty over the impact of their personal
ability. Once this information becomes available, they are more likely to start
their own ventures since they are more risk loving relative to their risk-averse
peers. Or put it another way, both risk loving and risk-avoiding potential
entrepreneurs face uncertainty in information regarding how to start new
ventures; once such information becomes public via mentorship, uncertainty is
reduced and (to some extent) transformed into risks. As a result, an individual’s
risk propensity will become more salient in influencing his/her career choices. By
contrast, the truly risk-averse individuals are not likely to be close enough to the
borderline to be influenced by the mentors.
Hypothesis 2b. The positive effect of mentorship by a former entrepreneur is
positively moderated by risk propensity of the mentee. We might also expect that
the role of entrepreneur mentorship is moderated by the mentee’s social
background. If social influence from different sources is complementary then a
cumulative effect may exist between parental entrepreneurial experience and
mentors. However, if social influence from different sources is substitutive then
entrepreneur mentors may be expected to have a stronger effect for those
students from non-entrepreneurial family background.
Prior literature has shown that having parents who were entrepreneurs is one of
the strongest determinants of whether an individual will become an entrepreneur
or not (Sørensen 2007; Greenberg 2009). This effect may be due to a combination
of genetics (pre-birth) and nurture (post-birth) factors. Using adopted children in
the sample, Lindquist and Sol (2012) find that the post-birth effect is twice as
large as the genetic effect. Much of this post-birth (nurture) effect appears to be
due to exposure and role modeling by the parents.
For children of non-entrepreneurial parents, they must find these entrepreneurial
role models elsewhere. Entrepreneur mentors may play this role. However, as in
the risk aversion case above, one might expect that it is the children of
entrepreneurs who are closer to the edge of deciding to become an entrepreneur.
They may be relatively more affected by having an entrepreneur mentor because
the mentor’s influence can nudge these individuals who are already more inclined
for an entrepreneurial career. In contrast, students from other family
backgrounds might be less “primed” for an entrepreneur career; without the prior
influence of entrepreneurial parents, these students are not only less inclined to
the option of a startup career but also lack the absorptive capability towards the
advice and help provided by their entrepreneur mentors. However, prior work
provides evidence that peer influence appears to substitute for other social
sources of entrepreneurial influence. Nanda and Sorensen (2010) find that having
coworkers who had been entrepreneurs increased the likelihood of
entrepreneurship. The effect was particularly strong for those who did not have
entrepreneurial parents. In contrast to this work, we focus on the influence of
mentors that do not directly work with the mentees. Yet, we expect a similar
effect where entrepreneurial mentors can substitute for the positive influence of
entrepreneurial parents for those who lack parents as entrepreneurial role
models.
Hypothesis 3a. The positive effect of mentorship by a former entrepreneur is
positively moderated by the influence of parental entrepreneurship.
Hypothesis 3b. The positive effect of mentorship by a former entrepreneur is
negatively moderated by the influence of parental entrepreneurship.
Data
To study the relationship between type of mentorship and entrepreneurial
activity, we use a longitudinal, randomized, controlled field experiment. Prior
literature on entrepreneurship education suffers from several methodological
limitations, including lack of control groups, not using pre-test/post-test designs
and surveying participants with a predisposition for entrepreneurship. Our design
overcomes many of these challenges, but not all of them. One of the authors of
this paper teaches a class on entrepreneurship for two sections of 40-60 students
during a quarter each year. The course is in the School of Engineering and meets
one of the general requirements for engineering majors. As a result, it draws
students from a wide variety of engineering majors and some non-engineering
majors as well. The course is taught within a Management Science & Engineering
department, so the course contains many students who might be classified as
business undergraduates at other universities as well.
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the class participants. Just under half of
the students had parents or relatives with startup experience. Nearly three
quarters of the students are male. A few of the students (less than six percent)
are in Masters or doctoral programs. Nearly three quarters of the students in the
class have plans at the start of the class to form a startup business at some point
in their careers. The mean age (by 2012) was 23.7 (median=24). The class typically
is selective since more students apply than there are openings available. Seniority
(co-terms, seniors and then juniors) guides the class admission decisions. Most of
the students are juniors and seniors. Mentorship may be particularly important
during the early stage of one’s career development and especially important
during the years of higher education. As anyone who has worked with them
knows, students at this stage in their education are planning their careers and
searching for directions in their work lives. Thus, developing and running
experiments with individuals during this stage in their education and careers is
particularly compelling and appropriate. Prior work has also noted the importance
of socialization during the university years and its role in future career decisions,
including entrepreneurship (Hsu, Roberts, & Eesley 2007; Roach and Sauermann
2010). However, prior literature has not systematically examined the mechanisms
behind this effect. Students applying for the class filled out a pre-class survey
including questions about entrepreneurial intensions, demographic and
educational characteristics and behavioral questions. The course ran for ten
weeks during which students formed their own teams in the first two
weeks and were paired with two mentors who were as closely related as possible
to the industry area of interest where the teams expected to work on their
startup project. During the class, students worked on a startup project and made
one presentation to external judges at week four and a final presentation to a
different set of judges at week ten Students also undertook individual
assignments and case discussions. They were explicitly told at the beginning of
the course that the purpose was to expose them to entrepreneurship and let
them decide whether it was of interest to them or not. The purpose was not to
convert them into entrepreneurs. They were told that the tools and frameworks
in the class could be applied equally to careers in academia, government,
large companies or non-profit organizations. Students formed their own groups.
One of the authors used a number generator to randomize which teams would be
paired with mentors who were former or current entrepreneurs and which would
be paired with non-entrepreneurs. The pre-survey characteristics of students
randomized to the treatment (entrepreneur mentor) and control (non-
entrepreneur mentor) groups were similar in key dimensions such as risk
orientation, startup career plan prior to the class, and family background
in startup experience
(Table 1). Students were aware they were participating in a research project
about entrepreneurship, but were not told that it involved mentorship. Mentors
were instructed that they were expected to spend 5-10 hours approximately with
the students over the course of the ten weeks and to meet with the students in
person prior to their presentations. They were asked to help give feedback on
student’s ideas, and open up their networks to help the students.
However, they were asked not to invest in any student projects (at least until
after the course) as a course objective was to try to guide students to learn
entrepreneurship rather than either extreme of simply telling them their ideas
would not work or doing the work for them. Teams were paired with two mentors
both to give multiple perspectives and in case one mentor became busy and
could not meet with them. They were told that they did not need to meet with
the mentors simultaneously. Missing data was filled in with another post-
graduation follow-up survey.
[Table 1 inserted here]
Methods
The dependent variable is equal to one if the individual started (or joined) a
startup after
graduation and zero otherwise. Founding a startup was defined as “founding
indicates that you
were there at Day 1 and the other cofounders, if any, would consider you a
founder.” Joining a
startup was defined as, being one of the first thirty employees within the first two
years of operation. We use logit regressions to analyze whether the likelihood of
entrepreneurship was influenced by our key independent variables.4
Independent variables. Our key independent variable is Ent mentor which is an
indicator variable for whether the individual was randomized to entrepreneur or
non-entrepreneur mentors.
Hypothesis 1 is about the direct effect, and hypotheses 2 examine interaction
effects with the risk propensity of the individuals. We measure this construct with
the variable risk. We create this variable using a question from the survey, which
asked, “Indicate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with each
statement using a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (disagree completely) to 5
(agree completely): I am willing to take significant risk if the possible rewards are
high enough.” Risk preferences have previously been measured in several ways
including numeric hypothetical lotteries over money, risky behavior in the
domains of health, driving, financial matters, leisure, etc. However, such
questions are influenced by framing effects (Kahneman 2003). Lottery questions
require a high level of numeracy and responses may be biased toward
intelligence. Thus, more recent work has tested a simple and generalized question
about “willingness to take risks” (Dohmen et al. 2005; Dohmen et al. 2011). The
results show that this general survey question predicts answers about other risky
behaviors better than the lottery question. In addition, the general form of the
question has the advantage of being free from framing effects (it does not frame
the risk in a particular activity) and it does not require a high level of numeracy, so
there is less bias from intelligence or statistical capabilities. We asked
respondents whether their parents or close relatives had experience in
entrepreneurship and we code family as a “1” if either the parents or close
relatives had Some students went on to graduate studies after the class. We code
them in the following fashion. For students who enrolled in a Master’s program
but have not graduated by the summer of 2013 or who were still in college by the
summer of 2013, we treated them as missing values, as they have not had a real
chance to start their careers yet. However, we code students who enrolled in a
doctoral program and did not have startup experience as “0.” Given the
length of doctoral programs and the amount of time and energy commitment, we
perceive it as part of one’s post college career.
entrepreneurial experience. We use the interaction between ent_mentor and
family to test
hypotheses 3.
Controls. We include demographic controls, career intention controls from the
presurvey, grades, social influence from teammates, as well as section, major and
class year controls. We control for the age of the individual as of 2012. We control
for gender through the variable male.
The variable master PhD is an indicator for whether before the start of the class
the respondent was intending to pursue a Master’s degree or a doctoral degree.
We control for plan before as an indicator variable for whether before the start of
the class the respondent indicated that a startup was part of her career plan. The
variable teammate_esplan captures the total number of project teammates (self
excluded) that indicated a startup was part of their career plans before the start
of the class.
We control for grades via the variable honor_degree, which is equal to one if the
student graduated with honors and via gpa which is a four-category classification
of self-reported GPA scores ranging from 2.5-2.9 to 3.67 and above. We also
control for performance in the class via the variable rank which is the team’s
ranking within the class. Finally, we include fixed effects for the class section,
student majors, and class year (junior, senior, co-term and other).
Empirical Results
Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics and correlation matrix among our key
variables. There was a high percentage of students (>31%) in the class that
founded or joined startup firm’s post-graduation. This is not surprising given that
the class is the flagship entrepreneurship class in the Stanford engineering school.
Less than 60% of students were assigned entrepreneur mentors and about half of
the students self-reported to have parents or close relatives with
entrepreneurship experiences. Regarding risk orientation, an average student
reported a value of 3.99 on a scale of 1 (risk averse) to 5 (risk embracing). Out of
the 153 students, none of them reported a value of 1 and only 6 of them reported
a value of 2. 20
The correlation matrix is very telling. Even though entrepreneur mentors have a
positive correlation with students’ startup careers, this correlation has no
statistical significance. In contrast, startup careers are both positively and
significantly associated with a student’s risk orientation and family background in.
This suggests that the role of entrepreneur mentors on students’ career
orientation may be hinged on the latter’s personal characteristics and social
background.
[Table 2 inserted here]
Figures 1 & 2 provide tentative evidence supporting this speculation. Figure 1
examines how the likelihood of a student embracing startup careers is jointly
affected by
entrepreneur mentor and the student’s risk orientation. On the one hand,
students with a lower level of self-reported risk preference (i.e. risk ≤ 3) rarely
forms or joins startup companies after graduation;5 on the other hand, among
students with the highest level of self-reported risk preference (i.e. risk > 4), those
assigned with entrepreneur mentors seem particularly likely to embrace startup
careers.
[Figure 1 inserted here]
Figure 2 illustrates the joint effect between entrepreneur mentor and students’
family
background. There are three salient patterns: first, students who come from
families where
members have had entrepreneurial experiences are much more likely to embrace
a startup career,
regardless of she is assigned an entrepreneur mentor or not. Second, among
students coming from entrepreneurial family backgrounds, assigning an
entrepreneurial mentor only slightly increases
their likelihood of forming/joining startup firms (i.e. from around 40% to around
48%; or around
20% in relative magnitude). Thirdly, coming from families with little
entrepreneurial experience, teaming students with entrepreneur mentors
dramatically increases their likelihood of embracing a startup career (i.e. from
around 12% to 22%, or about 45.5% in relative magnitude). Taken together, these
patterns suggest that having an entrepreneur mentor and coming from an
To be exact, 4 out of 47 students in this category had post-class entrepreneur
experiences. entrepreneurial family are two substitutive mechanisms in
encouraging students to pursue startup careers.
[Figure 2 inserted here]
In Table 3, we use logit models to test our hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 posited that
mentorship by a former entrepreneur increases the likelihood of engaging in
entrepreneurship.
Model 1 regresses students’ career choice on entrepreneur mentorship. It shows
a positive yet
statistically non-significant association between the two (B = 0.521; S.E. = 0.331).
In Model 2,
we add controls both at the student level, such as individual demographics (i.e.
age, gender), preclass career plan, academic record (i.e. major, class year, GPA,
and honor degree), and at the team level, such as teammates’ startup plan and
team’s ranking within the class. Once these individual and team level
characteristics are controlled, our analysis shows a positive and significant
association between entrepreneur mentor and students’ startup career choice
(B=1.037; S.E. = 0.471).
The comparison between Model 1 and Model 2 suggests that the impact
of mentorship is not universal but hinges on the characteristics of the mentees.
We test this speculation in the next 9 models.
[Table 3 inserted here]
Hypothesis 2 posited that the positive effect of mentorship by a former
entrepreneur is moderated by risk propensity of the mentees. We first examine
the association between students’ risk preference and choice of startup career.
Model 3 shows that, even when other individual level characteristics are
controlled, students of higher risk preferences are associated with higher
likelihood of creating or joining early stage ventures as career choice (B = 1.496;
S.E. =.335).
This positive association continues to hold when we add mentor characteristics in
Model 4. We next test the interaction effect between entrepreneur mentor and
student mentee’s risk orientation.
There are three interesting patterns in Model 5: first, the positive and significant
association between entrepreneur mentor and students’ startup career choice
disappears (B =-6.096; S.E. =3.920.); second, we continue to observe a positive
but insignificant correlation between risk preference and startup career (B =
0.620; S.E. =0.605); and third, we observe a positive and statistically significant
association between startup career and the interaction term of risk preference
and entrepreneur mentor (B =1.743; S.E. =.937). These patterns suggest that the
impact of entrepreneur mentor is mainly channeled through their match-up with
student mentees who are risk-loving and are psychologically prepared for the
uncertainty and risks embodied in startup careers. Hypothesis 3 posited that the
positive effect of mentorship by a former entrepreneur is negatively moderated
by the influence of parental entrepreneurship. We add students’ family
background to regression analyses in Models 6-9. Models 6, 7 & 8 show that, on
average, students from families with entrepreneurial background are more likely
to start their own ventures or join early-stage ventures. Model 9 further adds the
interaction term between entrepreneur mentor and family background and we
find that the interaction term is negatively associated with our outcome variable
(B= -1.675; S.E. =0.873), suggesting that entrepreneur mentors have a particularly
strong impact on students from families whose members do not have
entrepreneurial experiences. However, unlike Model 5, adding the interaction
term between entrepreneur mentor and students’ family background does not
negate the positive and significant impact of entrepreneur mentor per se. Model
10 is the full model and our main results of the interaction terms continue to
hold. The comparison between Model 5, 9 and 10 suggests that social context and
individual characteristics influence students’ career choice, with students from
families with entrepreneurship backgrounds are more likely to engage in startup
careers postgraduation, students with high-risk preferences are less likely to do so
unless they receive an extra push from mentors with entrepreneurship
experiences.
Robustness and Additional Analysis
The real effect size is significant. As Graph 3 shows, when values for the other
variables are arbitrarily set at the mean, matching a student of low-risk
orientation (e.g. Risk = 3) with an entrepreneur mentor decreases his likelihood of
post-graduation entrepreneurship experience by 12% (i.e. from 16% to 4%),
although this reduction has no statistical significance. By contrast, matching a
student with high risk orientation (i.e. Risk = 5) with an entrepreneur mentor
increases his likelihood of post-graduation entrepreneurship experience by 27%
(i.e. from 29% to 56%) and this result has statistical significance.
Graph 4 further shows that when values for all the other variables are arbitrarily
set at the
mean, matching a student from a family with an entrepreneurship background
with an entrepreneur mentor increases her/his likelihood of post-class
entrepreneurship experience by 6% (i.e. from 37% to 43%), but this result has no
statistical significance. In contrast, matching a student from a family without
entrepreneurship background with an entrepreneur mentor increase this
likelihood by 20% (i.e. from 11% to 31%) and this result has statistical significance.
To test if our empirical results are robust, we take two steps. First, to reduce the
concern that students might misinterpret our survey questionnaire, we use
students’ answer to a parallel question as alternative measures of risk orientation.
This alternative questionnaire asks a student to indicate the extent to which
she/he “agree(s) or disagree(s) with the following statement using a 5-poiont
scale, ranging from 1 (disagree completely) to 5 (agree completely): I enjoy the
excitement of uncertainty and risk.” The correlation between this variable and
Risk is reasonably high (.55). Second, to test the robustness of the impact of
family members, we narrow down our definition of family background in
entrepreneurial experience and focus only on the students’ parents. We code
parent_entrepreneur as 1 if either parent of a student had any startup
experience. Models 11, 12 and 13 in Table 4 use these alternative definitions of
risk orientation and family background and re-run the analyses of Models 5, 9 and
10 in Table 3. Our main results on the interaction effects between entrepreneur
mentor and risk orientation, and between entrepreneur mentor and family
background continue to hold. To reduce the concern that our measurement of
risk orientation may pick up other personal characteristics such as individual’s
competitiveness and optimism, we add student answers to the following two
questions to our analyses: 1) “I try to perform better than my co24 workers” and
2) “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.” Once again, these two questions
are answered on a 5-point scale. Models 14 and 15 add these two variables and
rerun the analyses in Model 13 and Model 10. The results show that students
with higher-level of competitiveness are more likely to embrace entrepreneur
career. Once again, our main results about the interaction effects do not
change in any substantively meaningful way.
Discussion and Conclusion
The effects of different types of mentorship in entrepreneurship education are
still poorly theorized and empirically not well understood. Previous literature
finds that exposure to entrepreneurial parents and coworkers increases
entrepreneurial behavior. However, altering one’s parents or coworkers are
difficult (if not impossible) interventions for policy or educational programs to
achieve. Much more common are interventions where mentorship is used. Yet,
our understanding of mentorship effects and the optimal structure of such
programs is still incomplete. Our research contributes to this literature by using a
longitudinal, randomized controlled trial, which finds that mentorship by
entrepreneurs yields a significantly higher likelihood of entrepreneurship after
graduation, particularly for less risk-averse students from non-entrepreneurial
families.
Contributions to Mentorship Literature
Prior literature on mentorship has produced mixed results. Studies have made
progress in conceptualizing the roles that mentors play in promotion within an
organization and in psychosocial development. Progress has also been made in
conceptualizing mentorship as a constellation of relationships where the content
and type of mentor may matter more than the presence or absence of a mentor.
Empirical work has found that informal, long-term mentorship may be more
effective in career advancement than formal, short-term mentoring. However,
this literature has not addressed which mentees are most influenced by which
types of mentors.
We contribute to this literature by further developing theory on the types of
mentoring and the types of mentees that are most likely to experience positive
effects. We show that short term, formal mentorship can be effective, particularly
when mentors with most relevant career experience are used for individuals with
the fewest entrepreneurial role models in their social sphere. Mentorship also
appears to have its strongest effects for those who are less risk-averse or close to
the margin of undertaking the activity of interest (founding in this case).
Empirically, we help to resolve some of the prior mixed findings by better isolating
the psychosocial development role of mentors, particularly when promotion
within the existing organization is not an issue. We perform what we believe to be
the first longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial of mentorship in
entrepreneurship. This allows us to better isolate the theorized
impact of the type of mentorship from selection effects, which can potentially
bias the results of other studies. Mentoring is a complex subject to study, partly
because people tend to look to many people around them, not just one, for
advice. Early work by Levinson et al. (1978: 97) proposed that the mentor is one
of the “most complex and developmentally important relationships … the
mentor is ordinarily several years older, a person of greater experience and
seniority.” However, recent work has proposed that there are limits to focusing
on a single mentor, prompting scholars to revisit Kram’s (1985) idea that
individuals rely on multiple influences, and it is the specific content of these
“relationship constellations” that matters (Baugh & Scandura 1999; Higgins
2000; Higgins & Kram 2001). In this light, our focus is not on whether an individual
has a mentor or not. Rather, we focus more on the “content” and type of mentor
in the student’s network. The intensity of the mentorship we analyze is a middle
ground between career mentorship programs (which may last as long as the
individual is with the employer, or longer) and the two-day workshop mentoring
experience analyzed by Blau and colleagues (2010).
Contributions to Entrepreneurship Literature
A large and diverse literature has examined the characteristics and educational
and career experiences of those who are most likely to become entrepreneurs
(e.g., McGrath, MacMillan and Scheinberg 1992; Sørensen 2007). Only recently
have scholars begun to examine which types of educational experiences foster
entrepreneurship.
The impact of education on alumni entrepreneurship has been left largely
unexplored, despite the proliferation of entrepreneurship courses and programs
(Katz 2003). This research contributes to the literature by examining mentorship
by entrepreneurs vs. non-entrepreneurs, effects entrepreneurial behavior. Much
of the prior work on education and entrepreneurship has focused on the level of
education. Yet, a meta-analysis of this work finds that education has no
bearing on entrepreneurship (van der Sluis et al. 2008). Very few scholars attempt
to link the content or type of education to entrepreneurship. Baumol (2004)
argues that a different type of education may be needed for entrepreneurship.
We contribute to this literature by showing that entrepreneurship education
which includes mentorship can have a strong, positive impact on entrepreneurial
behavior. Yet, to achieve this maximum impact, entrepreneur mentors should be
selected whenever possible. All types of mentors can potentially aid mentees in
their future fundraising efforts. Entrepreneur and investor mentors can both
coach mentees on fundraising pitches and advise on what to do once in front of
an early-stage investor. Mentors who are or have been investors provide the most
direct link, however, entrepreneurs and even employees often have investors in
their personal networks whom they can make introductions to if needed (Wang
2013). Faculty and organizers of mentorship programs also have investors in their
networks to introduce potential entrepreneurs to. It may be that employees at
larger firms have fewer investors in their personal networks relative to venture
capitalists or entrepreneurs. Finally, mentoring in entrepreneurship is different
from the typical career mentorship that has been studied, in that it lacks the
“getting ahead in this organization” element of mentorship. Typical career
mentorship often has an element of guiding the mentee on how to get promoted
and move up within the current organization. Since entrepreneurial mentorship is
geared towards helping the mentee create his or her own organization, personal
development is emphasized to a greater degree. Mentorship in entrepreneurship
does not involve a larger organization, so guiding the mentee on how to get
promoted does not factor in. The fact that mentorship in entrepreneurship
focuses more on personal development regarding starting one’s own firm (and
less or not at all on how to get promoted in the current organization), would
cause it to generate
less upward impact on opportunity costs. This is because there is no higher
position within the current organization that mentors are trying to help their
mentees achieve. Nonetheless, mentors might recruit talented students to work
in their firms or in their portfolio companies, which would tend to increase
opportunity costs. Mentors who are entrepreneurs would not appear to result in
a significant difference in terms of the job opportunities that they could provide
to mentees.
Investors and employees could just as easily recruit promising mentees into their
organizations as entrepreneurs.
The literature appears to indicate that an individual’s propensity for
entrepreneurship is largely determined by aspects outside of the control of
policymakers and universities, such as gender, family background, coworker
networks, and work experience.
Literature on mentorship
seems to cast doubt that short-term, formal mentorship programs have an
impact, even on promotion within an organization. Yet in contrast to this
literature, we show that mentorship by entrepreneurs, even in a short ten-week
course, does positively contribute to entrepreneurial activity, particularly for
students not otherwise exposed to entrepreneurship, and who are not
averse to taking on new risks and challenges.
In conclusion, as efforts to foster entrepreneurship proliferate both in the private
sector and academia, we must seek out a better theoretical and empirical
understanding of their dynamics and eventually their optimal design. Mentorship
is a common element in these programs whether in university courses or
incubators and accelerators. Yet, the field is in its infancy in conceptualizing and
understanding what types of educational experiences may increase
entrepreneurship, if any. Prior studies that help to inform us typically suffer from
several methodological challenges.
We suggest a potentially effective mechanism for increasing entrepreneurship
and guidance on which types of mentors to recruit and which types of
individuals are most likely to increase their propensity for entrepreneurship as a
result of mentorship. It is important to take into account that some mentors can
be more effective than others with students, and these programs will encourage
entrepreneurship among a certain segment of the student and alumni population.
We hope that further studies take advantage of randomized field experiments to
further our understanding of mentorship and which types of educational
experiences are most effective.
References
Baugh SG, Scandura TA. (1999). The effect of multiple mentors on protégé
attitudes toward the work setting. J. of Soci. Behav. and Personality 14(4): 503-
521.
Baumol WJ. (2005). Education for Innovation: Entrepreneurial Breakthroughs
Versus Corporate Incremental Improvements. Innov. Policy and the Econ. 5:33-56.
Blau, FD, Currie JM, Rachel TA, Croson, Ginther DK. (2010). Can Mentoring Help
Female Assistant Professors? Interim Results from a Randomized Trial, Amer Econ
Rev,100(2) :348-52.
Bottazzi L, Marco D, Hellmann T. (2008). Who are the active investors? Evidence
from venturecapital. J of Finan Econ 89(3): 488-512.
Bragg A. (1989). Is a mentor program in your future. Sales and Market. Manage.
141(11):54-63.
Brockhaus RH. (1980). Risk taking propensity of entrepreneurs. Acad. of Manage.
J. 23(3) 509-520.
Bruneela J, Ratinhoc T, Claryssea B, Groenc A. (2012). The Evolution of Business
Incubators: Comparing demand and supply of business incubation services across
different incubator generations. Technovation 32(2):110-121.
Cramer JS, Hartog J, Jonker N, Van Praag CM. (2002). Low risk aversion
encourages the choice for entrepreneurship: an empirical test of a truism. J. of
Econ. Behave. & Organ. 48(1) 29- 36.
Cumming DJ, Fischer E. (2012). Publicly funded business advisory services and
entrepreneurial outcomes. Research Policy 41 (2): 467– 481.
DohmenT, Falk A, Huffman D, Sunde U, Schupp J, Wagner GG. (2005). Individual
Risk Attitudes: New Evidence from a Large, Representative, Experimentally­
Validated Survey, IZA Bonn, DP 1730.
Dohmen T, Falk A, Huffman D, Sunde U, Schupp J, Wagner GG. (2011). Individual
Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, and Behavioral Consequences.
Journal of the European Economic Association 9(3):522–550
Donckels R. (1991). Education and entrepreneurship experiences from secondary
and university education in Belgium. J. of Small Bus. & Entre. 9(1):35-42.
Dreher GF. Ash RA. (1990). A comparative study of mentoring among men and
women in managerial, professional, and technical positions. J. of Appl. Psycho.
75(5):539.
Eby LT. (2010). Mentorship. APA handbook of industrial and organizational
psychology. 505– 525.
Eesley CE, Roberts EB. (2012). Are You Experienced or Are You Talented?: When
Does Innate
Talent versus Experience Explain Entrepreneurial Performance?. Strategic Entre. J.
6(3) 207-219.
Fayolle A. (2000). Exploratory study to assess the effects of entrepreneurship
programs on French student entrepreneurial behaviors. J. of Enterprising Cult.
8(02):169-184.
Fayolle A, Gailly B, Lassas-Clerc N. (2006). Assessing the impact of
entrepreneurship education programmes: a new methodology. J. of Eur. Ind.
Training 30(9):701-720.
Gorman G, Hanlon D, King W. (1997). Some research perspectives on
entrepreneurship education, enterprise education and education for small
business management: a ten-year literature review. Int. Small Bus. J. 15(3):56-
77.E
Harhoff D. (1999). Firm formation and regional spillovers-evidence from Germany.
Econ. Of Innov. and New Tech. 8(1-2) 27-55.
Higgins MC. (2000). The more, the merrier? Multiple developmental relationships
and work satisfaction. J. of Manage. Develo. 19: 277-296.
Higgins MC, Kram KE. (2001). Reconceptualizing mentoring at work: A
developmental network perspective. Acad. of Manage. Rev. 26(2):264-288.
Holm HJ, Opper S, Nee V. (2013). Entrepreneurs under uncertainty: An economic
experiment in China. Management Science 59(7): 1671-1687.
Hsu DH. (2007). Experienced entrepreneurial founders, organizational capital, and
venture capital funding. Res. Policy 36(5) 722-741.
Iyigun MF, Owen AL. (1998). Risk, entrepreneurship, and human-capital
accumulation. The Am. Econ. Rev. 88(2): 454-457.
Johnson WB. (2007). On being a mentor: A guide for higher education faculty.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Johnson WB, Anderson GR. (2010). Formal Mentoring in the US Military. Naval
War College Rev. 63(2)
Kantor J. (1988). Can entrepreneurship be taught?: A Canadian experiment. J. of
Small Bus.s & Entre. 5(4):12-19.
Katz JA. (2003). The chronology and intellectual trajectory of American
entrepreneurship education: 1876–1999. J. of Bus. Venturing, 18(2):283-300.
Kihlstrom RE, Laffont JJ. (1979). A general equilibrium entrepreneurial theory of
firm formation based on risk aversion. The J. of Poli. Econ., 719-748.
Knopp L. (2007). State of the Business Incubation Industry. Athens, Ohio: National
Business Incubation Association.
Kram KE, Isabella LA. (1985). Mentoring alternatives: The role of peer
relationships in career development. Acade. of manage. J. 28(1) 110-132.
Krueger NF, Brazeal DV. (1994). Entrepreneurial potential and potential
entrepreneurs. Entre Theory and Practi. 18 91-91.
Kuratko DF. (2005). The emergence of entrepreneurship education: development,
trends, and challenges. Entre. Theory and Pract. 29(5) 577-598
Landier A. (2005). Entrepreneurship and the Stigma of Failure. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=850446 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.850446
Lazear E. (2005). Entrepreneurship. Journal of Labor Economics, 23(4): 649-679.
Lerner J, Malmendier U. (2013). With a Little Help from My (Random) Friends:
Success and Failure in Post-Business School Entrepreneurship. Review of Financial
Studies, 26 (10), pp. 2411-52
Lester PB, Hannah ST, Harms PD, Vogelgesang GR, Avolio BJ. (2011). Mentoring
impact on leader efficacy development: a field experiment. Acade. of Manage.
Learn. & Educ. 10(3) 409-429.
Levinson DJ. (1978). The seasons of a man's life. Random House Digital Inc.
Lindquist M, Sol J, Van Praag M. (2012). Why do entrepreneurial parents have
entrepreneurial children? Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper No. 12-062/3.
Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2101543 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2101543
Lucas RE. (1978). On the size distribution of business firms. The Bell J. of Econ.
508-523.
Masters R, Gibbs M, Meier R. (1988). Risk-Taking Propensity of American and
Indian Small
Business Managers: A Comparative Study. Entrepreneurship: New Direction for a
Global Economy by Roberts, GB & H. Lasher & E. Maliche (Eds.), 206-211.
McCauley CD, Van Velsor E. (2004). The center for creative leadership handbook
of leadership development (Vol. 29). John Wiley & Sons.
McDonald ML, Westphal JD. 2011. My Brother's Keeper? CEO Identification with
the Corporate Elite, Social Support among CEOS, and Leader Effectiveness. Acad.
of Manage. J. 54(4) 661-693.
McGrath RG, MacMillan IC, Scheinberg S. (1992). Elitists, risk-takers, and rugged
individualists? An exploratory analysis of cultural differences between
entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. J. of Bus. Venturing 7(2) 115-135.
McMullan WE, Chrisman JJ, Vesper JK. (2002). Lessons from successful
innovations in entrepreneurial support programming. Innov. and Entre. in
Western Canada: From Family Bus.s to Multinationals, 207-223.
Miner JB, Raju NS. (2004). Risk propensity differences between managers and
entrepreneurs and between low-and high-growth entrepreneurs: a reply in a
more conservative vein. J. Appl Psychol. 89(1):3-13.
Nanda R, Sørensen J. (2010). Workplace peers and entrepreneurship. Manage. Sci.
56(7):1116-1126.
Oosterbeek H, van Praag M, Ijsselstein A. (2010). The impact of entrepreneurship
education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation. Eur. Econ. Rev. 54(3) 442-
454.
Peterman NE, Kennedy J. (2003). Enterprise education: Influencing students’
perceptions of entrepreneurship. Entre. Theory and Pract. 28(2) 129-144.
Raabe B, Beehr TA. (2003). Formal Mentoring versus Supervisor and Coworker
Relationships: Differences in Perceptions and Impact. Journal of Organizational
Behavior.Vol. 24, No.3. pp. 271-293
Ragins BR, Cotton JL. (1999). Mentor functions and outcomes: a comparison of
men and women in formal and informal mentoring relationships. J. of Appl.
Psycho. 84(4):529.
Ragins BR, Cotton JL, Miller JS. (2000). Marginal Mentoring: The Effects of Type of
Mentor,Quality of Relationship, and Program Design on Work and Career
Attitudes. The Academy of Management Journal. 43(6):1177-1194
Roach, M.; Sauermann, H. (2010): A Taste for Science? PhD Scientists’ Academic
Orientation and Self-Selection into Research Careers in Industry. Research Policy,
39(3):422-434.
Roberts EB, Eesley CE. (2011). Entrepreneurial impact: The Role of MIT. 7(1-2).
Now Publishers Inc.
Sarasvathy SD, Simon HA, Lave L. (1998). Perceiving and managing business risks:
Differences between entrepreneurs and bankers. J. of Econ. Behave. & Organ.
33(2) 207-225.
Shane S. (2004). Academic entrepreneurship. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Scandura TA. (1992). Mentorship and career mobility: An empirical investigation.
J. of Organ.Behav. 13(2) 169-174.
Simmons SJ, Wiklund, Levie J. (2013). Stigma and business failure: implications for
entrepreneurs’ career choices. Small Bus. Econ.
Sørensen, JB. (2007). Closure and exposure: Mechanisms in the intergenerational
transmission of self-employment. Res. in the Socio. of Organ. 25:83-124.
Souitaris V, Zerbinati S Al-Laham A. (2007). Do entrepreneurship programmes
raise entrepreneurial intention of science and engineering students? The effect of
learning, inspiration and resources. J. of Bus. Venturing 22(4):566-591.
Srivastava SB. 2013 “Network Intervention: A Field Experiment to Assess the
Effects of Formal Mentoring on Workplace Networks.” University of California,
Berkeley Working Paper.
Tkachev A, Kolvereid L. (1999). Self-employment intentions among Russian
students. Entre, & Regional Dev. 11(3):269-280.
Wang YB. (2013). The Power of Limited Effects: Social Ties and Venture Financing
in China. Boston University Working Paper.
Weaver KM, Dickson PH, Solomon G. (2006). Entrepreneurship and education:
what is known and what is not known about the links between education and
entrepreneurial activity. In Chad Moutray (Ed.), The Small Business Economy: A
Report to the President, SBA Office of Advocacy, Washington, pp. 113–156
Wu B, Knott AM. (2006). Entrepreneurial risk and market entry. Manage. Sci.
52(9) 1315-1330.
Van der Sluis J, Van Praag M, Vijverberg W. (2008). Education and
entrepreneurship selection and performance: A review of the empirical literature.
J. of Econ. Surv. 22(5):795-841.
Vesper KH, Gartner WB. (1997). Measuring progress in entrepreneurship
education. J. of Bus. Venturing 12(5):403-421.
Von Graevenitz, Harhoff DG, Weber R. 2010. The effects of entrepreneurship
education. J. of Econo. Behav. & Organ. 76(1):90-112.
Zarutskie R. (2010). The Role of Top Management Team Human Capital in Venture
Capital Markets: Evidence from First-time Funds, J. of Business Venturing, 25:155-
172.
Zhao H; Seibert SE, Hills, GE. (2005). The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy in the
Development of Entrepreneurial Intentions. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol
90(6), 1265-1272.