Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary How do different sources of social influence impact the likelihood of entrepreneurship? Using a longitudinal field experiment with a pre-test/post-test design, random assignment to an entrepreneur mentor of a student increases the likelihood of entrepreneurial careers, particularly for students whose parents were not entrepreneurs. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>How do different sources of social influence impact the likelihood of entrepreneurship? Using a longitudinal field experiment with a pre-test/post-test design, random assignment to an entrepreneur mentor of a student increases the likelihood of entrepreneurial careers, particularly for students whose parents were not entrepreneurs. Additional analysis shows the mentor influences the decision to join an early-stage venture, but not to become a founder. Performance data suggests that entrepreneurial influence is not encouraging “worse” entrepreneurship and may have helped students in joining or founding better-performing ventures. This contributes to the literature on social influence in entrepreneurship by examining the interaction between multiple sources of social influence and by using a randomized field experiment to overcome the endogenous process of tie formation.</p> <p> </p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.01.010 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question How do different sorts of social influence affect the likelihood someone will become an entrepreneur? Sample Trial population and sample selection Students enrolled in a 10-week elective entrepreneurship class at a university Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description A 10-week elective course on innovation and entrepreneurship where students team up to work on a start-up project. Each team is assigned two mentors who are closely related to the industry of their start-up. Some teams are paired with a former or current entrepreneur while the rest are paired to non-entrepreneurs. Besides their entrepreneurial experience, mentors are otherwise similar (in terms of age, gender, work experience, education, etc.). Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Classroom data / survey Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Whether or not a student founds or co-founds a venture after completing their studies. Whether or not a student joins a venture as an early employee after completing their studies.</p> Results <p>Students assigned to entrepreneur mentors are more likely to pursue a start-up career by joining an early-stage venture.The effect is concentrated among students that do not have entrepreneur parents and stronger for those that had two instead of only one mentor during the course. Having an entrepreneur mentor instead of a non-entrepreneur mentor does not influence students’ decision to start their own venture.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Eesley, C., Wang, Y. (2017). 'Social influence over career choice: evidence from a randomized field experiment on entrepreneurial mentorship'. Research Policy. Citation for use in academic references
