Towards an Entreprenueral University Analysis

7/29/2019 Towards an Entreprenueral University Analysis

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TOWARDS AN ENTREPRENUERAL UNIVERSITY: THE ECONOMIC AND

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT EQUATION OF A UNIVERSITY IN ECONOMICS LIFE

COMPARISON WITH

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ENTREPRENUERAL UNIVERSITY BY MARIBEL

GUERRERO AND DAVID

2010

INTRODUCTION:



“Entrepreneurial University” was a term introduced by Etzkowitz in 1983 to describe the

importance of institutions in regional economic development but later this term got associated

with universities when the policymakers and academics realized that these institutions have a

“third mission” which is beyond teaching and research. “Third mission” was given priority

because economic development is considered to be an essential role that universities should play

and it’s the main reason that universities are becoming enterprising culture.

One important concept regarding the role of universities in economic development is through the

practice of commercialization of scientific research through patent licensing or by creating

knowledge based enterprises. The role of universities in economic development is recognized as

entrepreneurial university concept.

The concept of Creative destruction was declared as an essential fact about capitalism by

Schumpeter and explained that how new methods continuously change the previous ones for

example mode of production changed from manual to mechanical, the production of steel

changed coal fired furnaces to arc melting process and on campus academia was replaced by the

virtual university by the use of online technology. Creative destruction is also referred as a

paradoxical term because it puts two opposing ideas to form a new meaning, describing that

capitalism cannot be in equilibrium and there is a need of continuous change .Growth comes

from change and entrepreneur is the agent who brings change. This concept was considered to be

the most fascinating one because it focused on the essence of economics which is “dynamic

economics “.He also explained that a leadership of a new man brings the idea of new methods

and new institutions in the society.

In contrast, the article we chose says that an entrepreneurial society refers to places where

knowledge-based entrepreneurship has emerged as a driving force for economic growth,

employment creation and competitiveness. However, the article goes on to say that no empirical

study has highlighted the interrelations among environmental and internal factors thatconditioned the development of entrepreneurial universities with the teaching, research and

entrepreneurial missions that they need to achieve. This paper aims to contribute to a better

understanding of these interrelations identifying the most critical factors that conditioned these

missions and to this end brings a proposal model to measure this phenomenon empirically in the

light of the Institutional Economics and the Resource-Based View.



Entrepreneurial Universities

Universities have another pressure which is to play a role in the competitiveness of national

economies via the commercialized of the research. Pressure of globalization and a drive for

change have created the need for a new type of university. There is also a need to prepare

students to a life of uncertainty and discontinuity, global mobility along with cultural change and

fluid organization structures. For this purpose every university must develop entrepreneurial

capabilities in students. This situation initiates some questions that “Are universities

entrepreneurial? How can they be entrepreneurial? After all the actual nature of a university is

not to be a profit seeking institution?”

The other article’s take on entrepreneurial universities is that the entrepreneurial university plays

an important role as both a knowledge-producer and a disseminating institution. In this sense, an

entrepreneurial university could be defined as a survivor of competitive environments with a

common strategy oriented to being the best in all its activities (e.g., having good finances,

selecting good students and teachers, producing quality research) and tries to be more productive

and creative in establishing links between education and research.

Reviewing literature and observing environment

Many of the researchers have observed that universities have taken an important place beyond

the function of imparting knowledge. Nowadays they are becoming entrepreneurial universities

thereby promoting public as well as regional development.

Take the example for China. Today it is widely recognized as the “Elephant economy”. Why?

Because it’s more powerful and solid. It has seized the opportunities from the investors to come

explore markets and give incentives. And now Chinese have become a threat to some and for

others it serves as an advantage.

What China did was it opened up its controlled market economy to economy promoting

entrepreneurship. But only this was not the end, they recognized that there was a dire need that



entrepreneurs have to be supported. However needing an enterprising culture suitable enough to

grow was also necessary. So to bring an ecosystem of entrepreneurship they realized they had to

go back to their intuitions where all disciplines intersected. And today china is very successful. It

has university being recognized as the leading university for PhD in entrepreneurship. Over the

years immense importance and emphasis has been placed on entrepreneurship and this is how

growth has emerged from China.

Our article supports this assertion by establishing that entrepreneurial universities additionally

need to become entrepreneurial organizations; intuitively, the mentality inside their universities

started to change over the last 5 years (since 2000). However, universities are complex

organizations comprising a number of overlapping and nested communities of practice (Finlay

2004) and the economic benefit of universities for the local area is not highly visible. In this

respect, Feldman and Desrochers (2003) found that it might be attributed to the lack of incentives

and encouragement for commercial activity that might have potentially benefited the local area.

The article states that their members need to become potential entrepreneurs; and their

interaction with the environment needs to follow an entrepreneurial pattern. As a consequence,

the outcomes of an entrepreneurial university are linked with its missions; teaching, research,

and entrepreneurial activities. Finally, the criteria to measure the outcomes of these universities

are supported by the new university missions. Therefore the University has been experimenting

with several cultural, educational, institutional and legislative challenges (Guerrero 2010) and

special emphasis has been placed on not only producing entrepreneurs but also imparting it

globally.

Historical background

America

America is the hub of some of the best entrepreneurs in the world. Most of the entrepreneurs in

America are self-made and are generous enough to pay back the same society the person they are

today. These people believe that their success would not have been possible without their



society. America is the pioneer for the emergence of entrepreneur universities. The generous

people who wanted to pay back to the society were allowed to set up schools and universities.

U.K

Universities of U.K made science and technology their foremost priority, focusing oninnovation. These universities came into being after comparing themselves with the standards of

universities in America and Europe

Brazil

From the last three decades the Brazilian universities have been using incubation method in

almost all the functions of development, training, forming high tech firms, establishing

consulting firms, and transferring high tech knowledge to low tech firms, this helps to form job

creation, address issues on poverty and community development.

Blue sky universities

Universities today raise funds from the licensing of technology sale of equity. They can also

raise funds and new businesses with the help of government apart from just spreading knowledge

and education in society

European context

In 1998 Clark introduced entrepreneurial university with features such as risk taking, energy, and

heightened aspiration.

Our article takes a research based view rather than an analysis of the phenomenon’s history bytaking into account the internal and external factors responsible for the need of entrepreneurial

education. An entrepreneurial university requires entrepreneurial organizational structures to

create a connection between teaching, research and administration functions and that help to

generate a shared vision where a university is more than just the sum of warring departments.

Another organizational element is managerial self-governance that embraces internal

management structures, decision-making and leadership roles.

Entrepreneurial policy

Entrepreneurship is more relevant and linked to the economic growth. It contributes to

enterprising culture and entrepreneurship. Researchers want to know the importance of policy

that can be used by the institutions for long run prosperity, and why the entrepreneurship plays

an important role in capitalism; all this gave birth to the importance of entrepreneurship policy

than to SME policy. Most nations have now acquired the entrepreneurship policy .it is about

creating an environment for the entrepreneurs.



What they need to teach is the “entrepreneurship education”. As Donald Kuratko said, “people

not the institutions create economic wealth.” This is infact the rediscovery of business as

enterprise and as such it is as dynamic and productive and the creator of wealth as the individual

behind the enterprise.

This article established a framework that the ultimate goal of the universities is to produce people with skill who are capable of creative destruction, economic wealth and social justice. It

also says that university is a business model prepared to take on the challenge of marketing in a

highly competitive environment.

Now there are different types of entrepreneurship present which includes indigenous

entrepreneurship, Female entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial marketing strategy. The writer of

this article believes that the field of entrepreneurship has the potential to change the world and

we need to change the education policy to induct entrepreneurship as the central theme of

education.

Our article takes the same stance in policy making: An entrepreneurial university requires

managers, with personal characteristics of leadership, in professionalized full-time posts, to fulfil

its mission. In addition, academics are a critical human resource for the development of

educational quality and generation of innovation in research. In this context, the managers and

academics are the actors involved in the internal transformation of traditional universities. These

resources allow an expanded developmental periphery, in other words, crossing the old

boundaries between the university and the external world through infrastructure to satisfy social

demands.

Teaching entrepreneurship: the important role of entrepreneurial universities:

Considering the importance of the role of entrepreneurship as an academic subject the important

thing is to consider that what should be appropriate topics to be taught to the students learning

entrepreneurship .The instructors should primarily focus on developing creativity and critical

thinking among the learners before they start aiming to teach them the actual subject. It secures

the presumption of motivation and ability of the student to develop entrepreneurial knowledge in

them. The significant combination to turn a student into an entrepreneur would be knowledge,

skill and confidence building. All such efforts should be initiated at the earlier state of student’s

education. Another barrier in considering entrepreneurship as a full time subject is most of the

educational authorities who fear to lose control be excepting it. On the other hand the universitiesare criticized on the relevance of their study programs and research projects as the skill base of

the economy is changing and a lot of people claim that disciplinary basis of universities is

becoming irrelevant.

In comparison, our article takes the research data to assimilate findings such as in the higher

education context, several rankings are produced annually to measure the quality of each



university. Most of them use indicators associated with the university’s resources and outcomes

or research productivity index. However, the rankings and indices have several limitations

associated with their interpretation; the indicators used that only measure the traditional

perspectives; and the validity and reliability of data sources.

Our article cements its findings by giving an analogical example: several years ago, theapparition of a successful academic entrepreneur produced some negative reactions in the

community. Then, the university culture was considered a barrier to the entrepreneurial process.

Nowadays, the university culture is changing slowly and the academic entrepreneur would be

considered such a role model who can impact positively in the university community. Our article

concludes with the finding that the entrepreneurial opportunities are associated with the

generation and the exploitation of knowledge considered such a key factor of production in this

economy. As a result of these challenges, the phenomenon of entrepreneurial universities has

emerged with a common strategy focused on being entrepreneurial at all university levels.

Documents

Towards an Entreprenueral University Analysis