Academic entrepreneurship (AE) describes activities academics undertake in order to commercialize their research results regardless of who is the owner of the IP. For decades, the phenomenon of AE has been widely studied, both theoretically and empirically. While literature often focuses on novice or established academic entrepreneurs, we extend this scope and scrutinize the under-investigated transformation of Early-Stage-Researchers (ESR) to AE. To uncover the basic dynamics underlying this transformation process from ESR to AE, we investigate the influence of the ESR’s personality traits and working context on the ESR’s opportunity recognition and resource orchestration skills.