Micro-transitions and work identity: The case of academic entrepreneurs

Journal article, 2025

Research Summary: This paper examines how academic entrepreneurs—scientists who found research-based startups while remaining in academia—construct and sustain their professional identities amid frequent transitions between academic and entrepreneurial roles. Drawing on 27 interviews with Swedish academic entrepreneurs, we show that hybrid identities are not simply the result of reconciling abstract role categories but are shaped through the material and practical organization of everyday work. We introduce the concept of professional micro-transitions as a key site of identity formation and argue that material artifacts and routines play a central role in this process. This study contributes to the literatures on identity work, role transitions, and academic entrepreneurship by offering a granular, materially grounded account of how hybrid identities are enacted and sustained in practice. Managerial Summary: This article investigates how academic entrepreneurs—university scientists who create startups to commercialize research results while remaining in academia—manage to build a hybrid professional identity when frequently switching back and forth between their jobs as academics and for-profit entrepreneurs. The findings reveal how they creatively find cross-fertilizing effects between their academic and entrepreneurial work tasks. This in turn allows them to reevaluate and extend their professional identity. For universities, incubators, and policymakers, this study suggests that supporting academic entrepreneurship is not just about funding or IP policies. It also requires recognizing the practical identity work involved and creating flexible environments that allow scientists to integrate both roles in meaningful ways.