The role and impact of entrepreneurship graduates in the Lund entrepreneurial ecosystem

Entrepreneurship graduates are critical for the long-term viability of university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems. These alumni are more likely to start new businesses and have stronger entrepreneurial intentions compared to other graduates (Kolvereid & Moen, 1997; Galloway & Brown, 2002; Lange et al., 2014; Piperopoulos & Dimov, 2015). International reserach also shows that alumni entrepreneurs tend to locate nearby their home universities, which in turn fuel local and regional entrepreneurial dynamics (Baltzopoulos & Broström, 2010; Heblich & Slavtchev, 2014). Adding to this, local alumni entrepreneurs that scale up and become national or even international players strengthen university reputation and inspire other students to engage in new venture creation (Jansen et al., 2015). Such virtuous cycles create a positive reinforcing spiral of enterprising activities, which energize the local economy through strong partnerships of trust between the university and the entrepreneurial community in the region (Fetters et al., 2010; Reichert, 2019). In this respect, successful alumni entrepreneurs often continue to relate back throughout their careers to the university, thus feeding their alma mater with valuable resources such as participation in educational and social events, and philanthropic donations (Matlay, 2009; Acs & Braunerhjelm, 2015). Alumni studies attracts growing attention among entrepreneurship scholars (Breznits, Hills & Zhang, 2019), and this is coupled with a general pressure from society and policy on assessing the broader effects of higher education (Delaney, 2000). The overall purpose of the post doc project is to contribute to the development of theoretical and empirical knowledge about the role and impact of entrepreneurship graduates in entrepreneurial university-based ecosystems. The project will focus on Lund University and alumni that have graduated from the university’s program and courses in entrepreneurship. The project takes as it point of departure a survey to over 400 alumni who have graduated from the international master program in entrepreneurship and innovation from 2008 to 2018 and where data has been collected about their entrepreneurial careers, including their geographical location. In this project, we seek to advance the broader economic and social impact of entrepreneurship graduates through qualitative case studies, especially with respect to why and how alumni continue to engage with the entrepreneurship program, the business school, extra-curricular groups such as mentors (etc), as well as what impact this engagement have on enterprising and innovation activities in the university-based entrepreneurial ecosystem. The project will use multiple sources of data to build up case evidence such as interviews, observations, and newspaper articles etc. Against the above, two broader research questions are addressed within the project: (1) what are the motivations and drivers of entrepreneurship graduates to relate back to the university and engage in educational and other support activities throughout their careers, and (2) how does this engagement influence enterprising activities in the entrepreneurial ecosystem surrounding Lund university.