Why Does Dave Spend Ten Times More Time on Interaction with Industry than Paul? Toward a Model of Social Capital Activation for Entrepreneurial Academics

This paper focuses on academics that are looking for entrepreneurial ways to pursue their teaching, research and commercialization interests, in particular by actively engaging in university-industry interactions. The paper aims to improve our knowledge of why some academics exploit their social networks with industry more actively than others. We develop a conceptual model that aims to explain a mechanism behind social capital activation, and to identify factors that are likely to have the highest predictive power. We theorize on how academic’s motivation, perceived social influence and perceived ability unite into readiness to activate social capital, and under what circumstances this readiness is likely to result in actual behavior. Specifically, the objective of this paper is to further develop the model constructs and to operationalize them into a set of measurable items. For each of the readiness constructs, we present a set of composite variables, as well as corresponding observable variables. We conclude with implications of our analysis for theory and practice, and set directions for future research.