Vol. 13 No. 82 (2024)
Articles

Innovation challenges and benefits in high-tech start-ups: A quantitative analysis of university student entrepreneurs in Romania

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  • Cristina Nicolau,
  • Oana Bărbulescu
Cristina Nicolau
Universidad Transilvania de Brașov, Rumania.
Author Biography

Lecturer Ph.D. Transilvania University of Brașov Faculty of Economic Sciences and Business Administration, Romania. 

Oana Bărbulescu
Transilvania University of Brașov, Romania.
Author Biography

Professor Ph.D. Transilvania University of Brașov Faculty of Economic Sciences and Business Administration, Romania.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2024.82.10.18

Published 2024-10-30

Keywords

  • Business creation, innovation, high-tech industry, Romanian entrepreneurs, students.

How to Cite

Nicolau, C., & Bărbulescu, O. (2024). Innovation challenges and benefits in high-tech start-ups: A quantitative analysis of university student entrepreneurs in Romania. Amazonia Investiga, 13(82), 222–235. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2024.82.10.18

Copyright (c) 2024 Cristina Nicolau, Oana Bărbulescu

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article analyses the entrepreneurial students’ attitudes towards innovations developed in high-tech industries, with the aim of identifying the benefits brought to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. It also identifies the main challenges that entrepreneurial students are faced with when developing innovations in high-tech start-ups. The empirical study used the quantitative methodology with the hypotheses tested with the independence tests for a sample of 98 students (n=98) from Romanian universities. The results confirm that students would start-up a new business in the activity fields connected to their studies whereas an association between their start-up idea and innovation in high-tech businesses was identified, with the need of proper managerial education. Hence, our findings demonstrate that there are variances between genders with regard to the challenges of implementing innovations in high-tech start-ups. They also show that the start-up ideas, according to their innovation type (application, platform or device with software), bring different benefits to entrepreneurs, within the three business fields they belong to: Earth problem-solving, business engineering and human and animal welfare. In this respect, our conclusions have significant implications for both the literature and practice of entrepreneurship.

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