LEAN START UP AS BRIDGE BETWEEN ACADEMIA AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP PRACTICE - A DUAL REGRESSION EVIDENCE FROM INDIA

Abstract

Objective: This study aims at exploring the Lean Start-up approach as an empirical bridge between academic training and entrepreneurial practice in India. The central assumption is that the Lean Start-up approach would have the same primacy from both sides of the academic-practitioner divide,-it would predict how the practitioner views Gen Z; and it would also predict why Gen Z entrepreneurs are motivated to take entrepreneurship as career.
Research Design & Methods: The study adopts a quantitative, cross-sectional, positivist research design. Primary data were gathered from 371 respondents from three sets of stakeholders-128 entrepreneurs, 143 Generation Z students, and 100 academicians-using structured Likert scales questionnaires, which were distributed online through Google Forms in December 2025 in India. All analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 32 and included descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation, and multiple linear regression.
Findings: The findings of the entrepreneur regression model show that Lean Start-up Practices have the strongest influence on Gen Z Perception (= 0.490, p < .001) with the entire model explaining 31.9 percent of variance (R = 0.319, F(2, 125) = 29.262, p < .001). For the Gen Z regression model, Lean Start-up Awareness had the strongest influence on Entrepreneurial Motivation (= 0.340, p < .001) and explained 56.9% of variance (R = 0.569, F(3, 139) = 61.082, p < .001). A combination of Lean Start-up as the dominant variable in both models provides empirical evidence to show that Lean Start-up can be viewed as a bridge between academia and practice.
Implications & Recommendations: Lean Start-up must be made a credit bearing and assessed component of all management and business courses offered at Indian higher education institutions. Concrete academic-practitioner partnership frameworks, similar to the triple-helix model, need to be established to sustain the integration of the Lean Start-up pedagogy into academic curricula. Minimum entrepreneurship infrastructure levels must be made mandatory for all UGC and AICTE affiliated colleges.
Contribution & Value Added: This is the first dual regression attempt to empirically validate the Lean Start-up bridge hypothesis across multiple Indian stakeholders by involving three diverse sets of respondents. While Ries (2011) laid the foundation for Lean Start-up at the practice level, this study goes beyond it to apply it in entrepreneurship education literature and propose some policy recommendations for developing economies facing academic-practitioner gap issues.