Scientist entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia

This paper examines scientist entrepreneurship at universities in Saudi Arabia. It is the first paper to examine scientist research in the context of the Middle East and, in particular, Saudi Arabia. In this paper we hypothesize that scientist entrepreneurship is positively influenced by experience, gender, social capital, human capital, and university and other institutional policies encouraging commercialization activities. To test our hypotheses, we use data from a unique survey of scientists from three universities in Saudi Arabia. The paper finds that there are key elements to scientist entrepreneurship that provide a sharp contrast to what has been established in the literature based on studies from the OECD countries. Finally, managerial implications are discussed and future research is recommended.