In a nutshell
This study of German students shows that while many say they’d like to start a business, far fewer take any concrete steps. The main brakes are surprisingly simple: not spotting viable opportunities and feeling they don’t have enough time or capacity to take on anything extra.
Universities tend to look super entrepreneurial from the outside. They host start-up fairs, pitch nights, guest lectures, hackathons, and they employ whole teams whose job is to help students turn ideas into companies. If enthusiasm alone could create businesses, campuses would be overflowing with them.
But reality looks a little different. Students often say they’re interested in entrepreneurship, yet most don’t actually do things that would move a venture forward. This study digs into that disconnect by focusing on that specific gap between entrepreneurial intention – the desire to start something, and entrepreneurial behaviour – the practical follow-through.
To start, the researchers confirm that the gap is alive and well. Across a sample of 300 students in German higher education, intention scores are noticeably higher than behaviour scores. The ambition is there, but the action is not keeping up.
When they dug into what actually separates students who take early entrepreneurial steps from those who don’t, two things stood out. The biggest one is simply not seeing a real opportunity. Plenty of students like the idea of entrepreneurship, but if nothing concrete seems doable or worth chasing, the intention just fizzles out.
Publication Date: July 2025
Authors: Pascal Renz, Taiga Brahm, Michael Flad
Institutions: University of Tübingen, Germany; Esslingen University of Applied Sciences, Esslingen am Neckar, Germany
Study Type: Quantitative cross-sectional survey
Sample Size: 300 students enrolled at German higher education institutions
Research Focus: Examine the entrepreneurial intention–behaviour gap among university students by analysing the influence of opportunity recognition, perceived behavioural control, perceived capacity, and procrastination on early-stage entrepreneurial behaviour.
Research Methodology: Online questionnaire (60 items) using validated and adapted scales. Data were screened for reliability and validity and analysed using structural equation modelling.
Main Findings: A gap is observed between students’ entrepreneurial intentions and their actual behaviour. Although intention is associated with behaviour, this relationship is weakened by limited opportunity recognition and low perceived capacity. Perceived behavioural control increases intention but shows no direct effect on behaviour, and procrastination is not found to have a meaningful impact.
Citation: Renz, P., Brahm, T. & Flad, M. Lost in translation: students’ struggle to convert their entrepreneurial intentions into behaviour. Entrepreneurship Education 8, 347–372 (2025). Link
The next major brake is capacity. Students who already feel stretched thin – juggling coursework, jobs, deadlines, and the general chaos of life – are much less likely to act on their entrepreneurial interests. Even when the motivation is there, the sense of having no time or energy left is enough to stop things before they start.
Other factors also matter, but not in the way you might expect. Students who believe they could become entrepreneurs are generally more interested in the idea, and that confidence is linked to whether they spot opportunities in the first place. But in this study, it didn’t directly predict whether they’d actually take action. And procrastination, despite being a tempting explanation for why students delay starting things, doesn’t show a straightforward link to early entrepreneurial behaviour here. It might matter later on, once someone is further into the process, or its effects might be mixed in with other traits, but it isn’t what’s stopping students at the very beginning.
Put simply, the results show that the intention–behaviour gap isn’t driven by laziness or a lack of interest or confidence. It’s driven by two very practical realities: not seeing a real opportunity to pursue, and not feeling like you have the capacity to pursue it even if you wanted to.
These results offer educators a bit of a reality check. Many programmes try to create entrepreneurial mindsets, raise intentions, and inspire students to feel more confident, and while those things matter they won’t close the gap on their own. In this context, the bottlenecks turned out to be far more practical. Students need to be actively empowered to identify realistic opportunities, and they need space – actual, tangible space in their schedules and mental capacity – to act on the intentions they already have.
For more on why opportunity recognition matters, read our Research Recap: The Skill of Seeing What Others Miss.
To understand how education affects the step from intention to behaviour, see Research Recap: When Does Entrepreneurship Education Actually Work?.
Original study: Renz, Brahm & Flad (2025).
