Sebastian Walther, Renata Dobrucka, Stephan Haubold
Background: This paper compares the theoretical start-up potential of the chemical industry sector with recently published numbers of the actual number of startups founded thereof. The theoretical potential was calculated by a method that was developed to calculate the start-up potential within the general public adopted to general students, .The actual number of startups founded in said sector was derived from a hundred percent analysis (ZEW database) of all companies foundet in Germany between 2016 and 2019. In this way, the paper wants to evaluate whether the actual start-up activity in the chemical industry sector is comparable to the theoretical startup activity of all students in Germany. Methods: The theoretical number of start-ups per year is calculated. The calculation is made using the average Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity rate (TEA rate) for student activities applied to the number of chemistry graduates between 2016 and 2019. Subsequently, the theoretical start-ups are compared with the actual chemical industry start-ups founded between 2016 - 2019