Business Entry and Window of Opportunity: Empirical Results for Women Entrepreneurs with Graduate Degree

This paper explores the nascence period - the time between idea generation and business entry - among women entrepreneurs with a graduate degree. To address this research problem and to better understand the specifics of a window of opportunity, we combine selected theories of human and social capital and set up three hypotheses regarding the influence of different factors on the nascence period. To test our hypotheses, we used a representative sample of 678 graduate women entrepreneurs in Germany and ran a logit of regression on the nascence period. The estimated model revealed two main factors with a positive influence, namely having an entrepreneurial role model and having attended seminars about starting a business. In our model, these factors support waiting longer before starting a business. In light of these results, we call for a more experimental approach in entrepreneurship education.