What if a startup's biggest advantage wasn't its product, but rather the kinds of questions its founders asked at the start? In one version of a startup origin story, a team builds the perfect tool for a very specific problem. In another, they build something that solves an entire category of problems, including ones that haven't been imagined yet. Which path a startup is on can depend on who's doing the work. New research from Gies Business suggests that founders with academic backgrounds may engage problems differently from their industry peers thanks to a mindset shaped not by product-market fit, but by intellectual curiosity.

That question—how a founder's background shapes the reach of their technology—drives a study published in the Strategic Management Journal by Gies Assistant Professor of Business Administration Shinjinee Chattopadhyay with coauthors Florence Honoré (Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Shinjae Won (School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign).

In Free range startups? Market scope, academic founders, and the role of general knowledge of AI, the team assembled a dataset of 988 AI ventures to capture team backgrounds, patent and publication data, and breadth of market applicability across industry verticals. The researchers found that academic startups had, on average, 12% greater market applicability (usefulness across multiple industries) than those without. The findings are based on team-led ventures, and while academic founders are a minority, their influence on breadth was measurable and consistent. In other words, academic entrepreneurs are more likely to build technologies that can stretch across more industries, serve more customers, and solve more potential use cases.

The Academic Advantage

The difference, Chattopadhyay says, begins early, often before the project even starts.

"The idea of this project originated from conversations with my academic friends who are also entrepreneurs. Through many conversations about how they work, I realized that academics develop their startup technologies quite differently than their non-academic peers. And that starts with idea selection. The ideas that academics are drawn to, and consider worth pursuing, are inherently quite different from those of non-academics. As a result, the technologies that get incubated within their startups are also quite different."

For ventures in early stages, broader market applicability—the range of distinct market segments a product can serve—can offer a serious edge. Technologies that stretch across sectors give startups more paths to traction and more resilience when any one vertical stalls, but this breadth also comes with execution challenges that may appear during scaling.

“Targeting a larger number of markets can offer certain advantages, such as having access to more customers or reduced risk,” Chattopadhyay explained. But that breadth doesn’t come free: “It’s typically more challenging for startups to target a wide range of market niches because of the resources required to successfully address the needs of customers in multiple market segments.”

What Sets Academic Founders Apart?

Differences in idea selection aren't just philosophical; they shape how academics approach problems from the ground up.

“Academics are trained to think in abstract ways and are attracted to the most general versions of problems,” Chattopadhyay said. “They like to classify problems by their commonalities and then find a solution that solves the entire category of problems.”

Imagine trying to build a robot that can navigate a maze. A non-academic founder might design a solution tailored to that specific maze—its known turns, its walls, its end points. An academic, by contrast, is more likely to create a system that can solve any maze, regardless of layout.

That tendency toward generalization doesn’t just shape what academic startups build, it reflects a way of approaching problems. That same orientation drives Chattopadhyay’s work with the Illinois Strategic Organizations Initiative, a research collective at Gies that brings scholars together to advance world-class studies and thought leadership in organizational behavior and strategy.

She points to companies like Covariant, which builds AI-powered robotics systems for warehouse automation across multiple industries, and DeepMind, whose early breakthroughs in AI were designed to solve foundational problems with implications across fields as varied as biology and logistics. In both cases, it's not just the technology that's expansive, it's the thinking behind it.

"The patents and publications from academic startups tend to be more general, meaning that they are cited by many more fields," said Chattopadhyay. "Non-academic startups’ patents and publications tend to be narrower, applicable to fewer fields, more focused on serving specific needs within the market. Because academic startups tend to develop more general-purpose technologies, they are able to target more markets than non-academics.

Scaling Smart

But generality isn't always advantageous in the long term. While broader applicability helps academic startups secure early success, Chattopadhyay adds that breadth can become a constraint as ventures scale.

"As startups mature, investors may expect them to be focused on narrower customer segments, where their product or technology is targeted towards solving very specific needs," she said. "Academic entrepreneurs may find that they are advised to narrow down and settle on fewer market segments as they mature. They will then need to think about potentially adapting their product or technology to satisfy investor expectations and scale successfully.”

What Founders and Funders Should Know

For academic entrepreneurs, the message is clear: breadth alone doesn't scale. As your venture matures, be ready to refine your scope, align with investor expectations, and adapt your solution for more defined customer needs. For investors, the message may be just as valuable. Startups that begin with wide market applicability often reflect deeper technical thinking and intellectual range. But long-term success still depends on whether that range can translate into targeted traction.

In the end, the best startup ideas may not begin with a product at all—but with a question that’s been asked the right way.