entrepreneurial professors and researchers can provide the link between education and startup support by being role models sharing research results for commercialisation and acting as mentors for student projects to facilitate this startup support needs to be embedded in education there is a need for the university leadership to create synergies between education research and entrepreneurship and to establish an institutionwide commitment to entrepreneurship with appropriate incentive structures for professors researchers administrative personnel and students provide soft incentives that stimulate involvement by professors and teaching staff by annual awards such as the best entrepreneurship innovative pedagogy and the best entrepreneurship professor