Time: 10:00-11:30 a.m.

Venue: Room 1102, The Main Building of School of Management, Zhejiang University

Speaker: Associate Professor Margaret Dalziel, University of Waterloo in Canada

【Seminar Abstract】

How do high-potential young entrepreneurs identify promising entrepreneurial opportunities? We investigate the technological antecedents of the equity-financed ventures founded by University of Waterloo (UW) alumni entrepreneurs identified by Pitchbook, a consultancy. UW operates Canada’s first and the world’s largest cooperative education program and ranks highly in the Pitchbook ranking of entrepreneurial universities. Our hypothesis is that student work terms will have an imprinting effect on the ventures of alumni entrepreneurs. Based on an analysis of the references of over 150,000 US patents, and employing a proven knowledge proximity measure, we find that the patent portfolios of alumni ventures are more proximate to the patent portfolios of work term employers than to those of control group firms. Our tracing of the technological imprinting effects of student work terms on subsequently-founded ventures provides objective evidence of the unanticipated entrepreneurship related impacts of a program designed for other purposes.