The ‘entrepreneurial turn’ and regional economic development mission of universities

In the last 20 years many research universities in the US have added regional business and economic development as a core mission to the traditional ones of instruction and scholarly research. It has been claimed by many critics, however, that this ‘entrepreneurial turn’ presents conflicts with long established academic norms, procedures, and reward systems. This paper utilizes a national survey of faculty attitudes towards academic entrepreneurship to investigate the extent to which the ‘entrepreneurial turn’ has become accepted and taken-for-granted, to identify which academic entrepreneurial activities are deemed appropriate, or legitimate, and those that are widely regarded as inappropriate, and to identify the most salient dimensions by which faculty attitudes vary.

Attitudes towards five particular ‘entrepreneurial activities’ of universities—as organizational entities—were asked:

1. assisting regional economic development;
2. encouraging and rewarding faculty to provide technical and/or managerial assistance to existing businesses in the region;
3. direct involvement in the commercialization of university-based research;
4. providing start-up assistance to technology-based businesses that grow out of university-based research;
5. making equity investments in technology-based businesses that grow out of university-based research.

The following figures indicate the attitude towards the "entrepreneurial turn"











The results provide evidence that the entrepreneurial turn within research universities in the US has not yet become ‘taken-for-granted’, that the norm of open science is still widely accepted and conflicts with some academic entrepreneurship activities. There seems to be a broad—though not consensual—agreement on the boundaries of what are deemed appropriate and legitimate entrepreneurial activities that spans disciplines and across prior levels of faculty experience in academic entrepreneurship.

The full article is in print and already available online here.

Contact

Prof. Harvey Goldstein, MODUL University Vienna, Department of Public Governance and Management, Am Kahlenberg 1, 1190 Vienna, Austria
harvey.goldstein@modul.ac.at | www.modul.ac.at