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What are the conditions that influence the decision of a patentee to start a new venture? Does the possession of a patent make the individual more likely to engage in the entrepreneurial process? Does the possibility of a provisional monopoly limit the danger and the uncertainty in the decision‐making for commercial exploitation of an idea? Literature has given some light on the decision of individual patentees to establish a new venture but either these studies examine a specific group of patentees or cover national patentees’ population without distinguishing between individual and firm patentees. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to literature which aims at the detection of factors affecting the decision of individual patentees to start a new business using data from a national survey on the population of individual patentees in a less technologically developed country.

This paper uses the responses of 434 individuals‐inventors, residents of Greece, from a broader survey conducted by the Greek Organization for Industrial Property in March 2007. Applying the collected data into a logit model, the paper addresses the questions raised in the literature about the source of knowledge, opportunities perception, and the past business experience on the decision of a patentee to start a new business venture.

The findings of the paper show that financial restraints strongly affect the decision of a patentee to start‐up a new venture. The collaboration with a higher education and research institution does not lead to an invention‐patent with technological opportunity content and this reflects the particularities of Greek academia while the opposite is the perception for the knowledge coming from market (incumbent firms). Finally, the new entrepreneur is more likely to decide to start a new venture in order to exploit commercially its patent rather than the patentee with past entrepreneurial experience. This finding contradicts the previous findings for the US and the authors believe that it may be a consequence of the Greek commercial and financial law and national culture idiosyncrasies.

The originality of the paper is due to the fact that for first time data from a survey of the patentees population is used. In addition, this is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, study for a less technologically advanced country. The findings of this paper have significant policy implications since it provides useful inputs for the design of the entrepreneurship policy.