Using attitudinal, situational, and personal characteristics variables to predict future entrepreneurs from national laboratory inventors

Several acts of Congress and the resulting agency implementing orders have been designed to encourage entrepreneurial start-ups based on public-sector technology derived from federal laboratory research. In response, many of the federal laboratories have instituted programs to stimulate the entrepreneurial act. Few, if any, of these programs, which commit substantial resources, are implemented using formal methods to predict the likelihood of associated individuals' becoming successful entrepreneurs. A previous paper revealed significant differences in attitudes and perceptions of situational variables between inventors at federal laboratories and successful laboratory spin-off entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to develop an experimental technique that, if validated by future longitudinal surveys, could facilitate the prediction of the successful entrepreneurial act. If such a technique can be established, resources could be devoted to those predicted entrepreneurs. Using inventors employed at the national laboratories and laboratory spin-off entrepreneurs as samples, this paper investigates the possibility of building a model based on individual inventors' attitudinal, situational, and personal characteristics that, if valid, could be used to ascertain the likelihood that such inventors may become entrepreneurs. The predictions resulting from the application of this technique suggest that few inventors are likely to become entrepreneurs unless attitudes and supportive mechanisms are dramatically changed.