Students’ Capability in Bridging the Entrepreneurial and Innovation Chasm

Practical entrepreneurship and innovation are essential for economic growth, individual growth, job creation, and increased social progress. Contrary, to more experienced entrepreneurs or innovators, young and ill-experienced 20-somethings entrepreneurs or innovators have time and access to technological resources to be active within the Innovation Value Chain. They have the potential to build incredibly successful business ventures. This paper adopts a pragmatic approach to explore and contribute to the discussion of addressing entrepreneurial and innovation chasm. Specifically, it demonstrates whether young people or students in their 20-something years of age are opportunity-oriented, proactive, and capable of innovating and establishing new ventures. Also, we examine if young people or students have a general understanding of the intellectual property system or, more specifically, a patent system. This study reveals that some of the most successful entrepreneurs and innovators started their businesses at a younger or at 20-something age group. Based on the importance of protecting the intellectual property emanating from entrepreneurial activities, this study indicates that most students who participated in the survey have a general understanding of the patent concept and have positive attitudes (i.e. belief and interest in establishing and managing a business of their own) towards entrepreneurship and innovation. This work's findings further demonstrate that young and ill-experienced individuals can establish new business ventures, thus bridging the entrepreneurial and innovation chasm. Bearing in mind that most students in this study are at universities, we provide recommendations, including future work on how technology-based universities could bridge the innovation chasm.