Entrepreneurial scales in the Italian academia context: a comparison between university spin-offs and high-tech start-ups

The present study, through a cross-sectional comparison, focuses on three well-known constructs in the entrepreneurial literature, namely entrepreneurial identity (EI), entrepreneurial bricolage (EB) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO), to assess their potential use in studies concerning university spin-offs (USOs). The current analysis wants to contribute to the research field by pushing forward the theoretical understanding of entrepreneurial dynamics in academic spin-offs, and besides ensuring the reliability of results in survey research on USOs by validating the scales of the aforementioned constructs, it provides new insights into the relationship between EI, EB and EO and the subjective performance of Italian USOs. To achieve these purposes, we draw on a robust national sample of 233 Italian USOs and 267 Italian high-tech start-ups (HTSs), which were used as a control group.