Abstract:

Introduction:
The temporal perspective of professional life shows us the importance of lifelong learning and continuous training. One underlying question that is repeated as a mantra in recent research on the development of the entrepreneurial profile of people is how a person becomes an entrepreneur. If the entrepreneurial characteristics could be developed through specific training.
The development of entrepreneurial characteristics in undergraduate and postgraduate students through university education has become an important and frequent issue in relation to lifelong learning. This question becomes more revealing if we also analyze the person's cognition and thinking style. The choice and development of specific thinking styles are influenced by the way people learn and develop a mental model of reality.

Objectives:
This work aims to analyze the relationship between the thinking styles and the entrepreneurial characteristics in a sample of undergraduate and postgraduate university students.
In this way, this work studies the predominance of entrepreneurial characteristics in people who present certain thinking styles as opposed to others.

Methodology:
To analyze the thinking styles we have used Linear and Non-Linear Thinking Styles questionnaire prepared by Groves and Vance (2014), that includes of eight different Thinking Styles (Linear, Creative, Values-Centered, Imaginative, Flexible, Insightful, and Emotional Thinking).
On the other hand, to analyze the entrepreneurial characteristics of university students, a questionnaire has been constructed based on an adaptation to the Spanish language of the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) prepared by Gosling et al. (2003), an adaptation to the Spanish language of the Measure of Entrepreneurial Tendencies and Abilities (META) prepared by Ahmetoglu et al. (2011), and the scale of Entrepreneurial Behavior (ENBE) prepared and validated by Morales-Fernández et al. (2016) from the graduated behaviors contained in the check list proposed by Villa and Poblete (2007).
The questionnaire was completed by 225 undergraduate and postgraduate university students.

Results:
We have determined the individual profile of the eight Thinking Styles and the entrepreneurial characteristics of each student.
Then we have created groups of students considering different levels of Non Linear and Linear Thinking. Finally, we have analyzed the existence of statistically significant differences between the groups according to the entrepreneurial characteristics.

Conclusions:
The results confirm, on the one hand, the existence of some Thinking Styles associated with high levels of some entrepreneurial characteristics and others Thinking Styles associated with medium and low levels entrepreneurial characteristics.
There are also differences between thinking styles and entrepreneurial characteristics of undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Keywords:

Thinking styles, entrepreneurial characteristics, undergraduate education, postgraduate education.