Launching students into enterprise: experiences with technology as a launching platform

The central issue in this contribution is how knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship can be stimulated when the driver is purely a technology push. The context of this study is the period December 1999–December 2000 when the ‘new economy’ was at its peak. At that time an innovation was ready to be launched in The Netherlands: Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), enabling the use of internet on a mobile phone. It was decided to make use of the momentum and stimulate entrepreneurship among the student community of the University of Twente. We will position this activity in the ‘mobile’ value chain and in the value chain for technology transfer. We describe the WAP launching platform, its actors and activities and give a short characterisation of the five companies that were launched through this activity.