Work

Staying on topic: How research knowledge spills over via university education to regional entrepreneurial activity

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Innovative entrepreneurship is an important driver of regional economic development. According to the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship (KSTE), universities contribute directly to innovative entrepreneurship by conducting state-of-the-art research and educating talent. A key assumption of the KSTE is that human interactions play a pivotal role in transferring knowledge from universities to entrepreneurship, implying that educating students on research topics provides an indirect route for knowledge to spill over into innovative entrepreneurship. Yet this mechanism has not been tested at the level of knowledge specificity where such human interactions actually occur. In this paper, we introduce topics as a novel level of analysis to examine these processes empirically. We define topics as knowledge organized around a coherent theme or problem orientation, making them understandable, transmittable, and usable across institutional contexts through human interaction. Using this topic-level approach, we answer the following question: What is the direct and indirect influence of the amount of university research and education on the level of regional innovative entrepreneurial activity on a topic? We apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation to different documents to extract the amount of educational, research, and entrepreneurial activity per topic in two university regions in the Netherlands. We then connect these activities on a topic through a series of regression models. Our results show that education on a topic has a strong direct effect and largely mediates the positive effect of research on innovative entrepreneurial activity on that topic. Our results further suggest that spillovers to innovative entrepreneurial activity mostly take place within topics rather than between them. Finally, we find evidence that research on related topics can pull talent away from innovative entrepreneurship on a topic. In practical terms, our results suggest that education on state-of-the-art research topics is an important mechanism for promoting innovative entrepreneurship.

Source: Research Policy

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2026.105646

Authors: Frank J. van Rijnsoever, Jip Leendertse, Iris Wanzenböck, Yvette Baggen

Institutions: Utrecht University, Delft University of Technology, Wageningen University & Research

Language: English

Topic: Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences

Subfield: Management of Technology and Innovation

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Quality education, Decent work and economic growth, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,280