How can the academic community train, develop, and continuously upskill researchers across all career stages in ways that remain relevant to the challenges academics face today? We argue that researcher development is best understood as an entrepreneurial process embedded in institutional contexts. Drawing on the core entrepreneurial processes of opportunity recognition, effectuation, bricolage, and iteration, we develop a developmental framework of a parallel process that explains how researcher trajectories unfold through iterative cycles of learning and opportunity pursuit across career stages. We also examine how institutional embeddedness, including managerial expectations, impact agendas, and bureaucratic constraints, shapes the conditions under which academic entrepreneuring unfolds, while highlighting structural asymmetries across career stages in access to time, networks, mentorship, and resources. By repositioning entrepreneurial processes through a developmental lens to better understand academic careers, we offer guidance for doctoral program leaders, institutional decision-makers, and funding bodies navigating the complex research environment. We also provide researchers with a lens to approach their PhD journeys, training needs, and career options. • Academic careers as entrepreneurial processes embedded in institutional contexts. • Identifies parallels between entrepreneurial processes and academic careers. • Framework of opportunity, effectuation, bricolage, iteration with academic careers. • Explains career-stage asymmetries in academic opportunity and resources. • Guidance for doctoral training, research career development, and funding bodies.
Aguinis et al. (Fri,) studied this question.