Thinking and doing differently: the immediate impact of entrepreneurship education on STEM PhD students

Abstract Existing evaluative frameworks for entrepreneurship education capture either short-term mindset changes or long-term venture outcomes, missing the immediate behavioural changes that can occur when training is delivered during rather than after the discovery process. This study examines the experiences of a cohort of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in biotechnology and biomedical sciences following participation in an industry-embedded entrepreneurship education program. Using a two-stage qualitative analysis, we identify two dimensions of program impact: industry orientation —shifts in how participants understood the commercial, regulatory, and translational landscape of their sector—and industry-informed practice —concrete changes in what participants did differently within their ongoing research and industry engagement. We provide preliminary evidence that entrepreneurship education delivered during the discovery process produces both dimensions, with industry-informed practice representing a category of impact existing frameworks are not designed to detect. Findings have implications for the timing, content sequencing, and evaluation of doctoral entrepreneurship education programs.