| This dissertation explores the complex social phenomena of students at US colleges and universities creating high growth firms and investigates the role, if any, played by the campus during the firm formation process. This dissertation employs mixed methods to better understand student entrepreneurs, their firms and the institutions where opportunity identification and firm formation processes began. Given the gap in the literature surrounding high growth firms created by students, no hypothesis is proposed or tested.;A framework for understanding the campus as a frontier, based on Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis of the US, is developed and proposed to better understand the potential impact of the campus on founders and firms. This dissertation includes a case study of a US research university that has borne multiple high growth student startups and the construction of a database of high growth student founders, their firms and their colleges and universities. Making use of the themes observed in the data collected, five common campus trails or pathways that student founders travel to high growth entrepreneurship are presented.;The dissertation presents the novel concept of the campus as frontier and constructs a database providing data on student founders and their interactions with the campus, produces a case study exploring how the campus as frontier may work at a leading research university, presents common pathways students travel across the campus frontier to high growth entrepreneurship, and places this new concept within its historical context in US higher education and innovation and entrepreneurship policy. This research has direct policy implications for those concerned with job growth, regional development, and improved quality of life, much of which springs from entrepreneurs and their firms. |
