Innovation and the Entrepreneurial University

During the last decades the number of universities extending their initial education and teaching missions towards the triple helix and knowledge triangle paradigms, e.g. knowledge and technology transfer and innovation has increased substantially. In line with this evolution the term ‘entrepreneurial university’ became increasingly popular however until recently there is hardly a common understanding of ‘entrepreneurial universities’. The main perception of ‘entrepreneurial universities’ rests with a visible and measurable contribution of universities to innovation and entrepreneurship in a broader sense. Although this perception is plausible and convincing it raises many open questions which mainly point to university governance models. The innovation and entrepreneurial university paradigm requires a holistic view on university governance approaches which include the full set of universities missions and respective management routines. In this respect it’s of utmost importance that universities keep a “healthy balance” between their missions. This statement is frequently used in many instances yet thus far there is no clear indication what a “healthy balance” implies. The chapter provides first indications about entrepreneurial university governance and respective management approaches.

The number of university graduates is continuously raising for many years creating an additional supply of highly qualified labor which doesn’t always meet respective demand thus can’t be absorbed fully. This holds especially true for Ph.Ds of which ever more are entering the labor market although the number of academic positions remains stable and also businesses have limited capacities for Ph.Ds. What follows is that entrepreneurial activities become a serious option for tertiary graduates. Namely Ph.D. graduates engaged in establishing companies by means of using state of the art scientific knowledge which they developed at universities thus generating substantial impact of university produced knowledge on the economy and the broader society. Specifically the cognitive base and the founders’ educational background is an important determinant for the success and impact of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship in general and academic entrepreneurship in particular. The chapter introduces a broader definition of academic entrepreneurship and investigates whether new ventures founded by Ph.D. holders exhibit different characteristics and/or different behavior patterns compared to the rest of the firms established in the same period in Europe.

This chapter explains the entrepreneurial university concept and its place and role in the triple helix in its entirety. It further elaborates on its implications for university management, departments, faculty members and supporting organizations. Moreover it reflects the meaning of the entrepreneurial university for stakeholders, i.e., university boards, regional and national policy and administrative bodies, funding agencies, the business community, university ranking institutions and the global university community overall. The chapter provides a comprehensive understanding of the entrepreneurial university, which is increasingly important because stakeholders’ expectations towards universities are growing. This in turn leads to increased pressure on universities to move beyond their traditional roles and models towards taking responsibility for economic development, large scale basic education and targeted further education and the development of value from research. These expectations provide opportunities for universities, but impose threats on the existing models and practices. Recent literature on entrepreneurial universities is incomplete and mostly focused on the commercialization of research, technology transfer and the third mission of universities. The article expands the predominant thinking about entrepreneurial universities and gives a broader structured definition.

Entrepreneurship can be considered a driving force for economic growth, employment creation, and competitiveness in societies. However, a crucial issue is the ability to produce knowledge and train a skilled workforce that has a proper entrepreneurial mindset. In this regard, there are three main actors: public governance, universities, and the private sector.

Universities should take more role as both producers and disseminators of knowledge in entrepreneurial activities. The concept of pre-incubation centers, which is the central focus of this paper, is one outcome of such activities.

By providing targeted resources and services, incubation serves as a business-support process that accelerates the successful development of start-ups and companies. Incubation ideas focus on already established firms—either start-up or senior firms; however, pre-incubation centers focus on the early-stage ideas of students and entrepreneurs.

This study addresses the impact of services offered in pre-incubation centers—namely infrastructure, coaching, and business networks—on the graduation rates of incubator participants in Turkey. Based on interview data with 23 of 40 pre-incubation managers, we found that it is necessary to develop synergy among universities and achieve local economic alignment. The educational system should produce individuals with requisite skills: at that point, they can become active in furthering government policies to promote entrepreneurship. In this context, entrepreneurial universities play an important role as both producers and disseminators of knowledge. University-based incubation centers will become key actors for promoting entrepreneurial culture in societies.

This paper discusses some of the policy issues and best practices aimed at enhancing HEIs performance and improving their impact on society and the economy within the knowledge triangle. The knowledge triangle concept aims at exploring ways to better align and integrate the research, education and innovation functions of HEIs. The paper describes the contents of the knowledge triangle, HEI performance through the lens of this concept, policies to promote the knowledge triangle in HEIs, as well as potential contradiction in relation to other knowledge producers—public research centres and companies.

The conclusion is that there is no single model of universities and knowledge triangle. This is due to the country-specific peculiarities of educational systems, diversity within HEIs themselves and the functions they perform, as well as the specifics of regional ecosystems. Accordingly, the key to the efficiency of the knowledge triangle tools is their place-based adjustment. In order to achieve a tangible contribution of universities to the development of regional and local innovation, it is necessary to ensure complementarities and a balance between their missions.

HGFs increasingly draw attention of policy makers with their outstanding performances as novel policy instruments. However, the heterogeneous nature of firm growth and its erratic patterns make them questionable. In addition, there is not any consensus about the definition and measurement method for high growth, which makes it difficult to compare different studies. The main research questions of this study are, whether HGFs in Turkey share common characteristics with HGFs in other countries and how the cohort of HGFs changes by using different definitions. In empirical part, the firm data is drawn from the SME Support Organization of Turkey (KOSGEB), in two consecutive 4 year periods. Our findings show that HGFs in Turkey have some common characteristics with other countries; they are relatively young and small. Whilst, firms with less than twenty employees comprise the majority of HGFs in this study, they are usually excluded out of the definition of HGFs in other studies. Furthermore, contrary to other studies, high growth is not one-time event and a significant amount of HGFs sustain their outstanding performance in the next periods. Consequently, each definition of high growth leads to a different cohort of firms. Whilst, a firm demonstrate high growth in one variable, it might have negative performance in others. Therefore, policies makers need to adopt their own definition in order to discriminate the outstanding performer firms from the modest ones.

Founding an R&D based startup is a risky challenge, one requiring balance between a technological search process and business capabilities. Stakeholders’ role is critical here as they help the entrepreneur in this endeavor. Our aim is to explore the stakeholder relationship building processes of R&D based startups. To this end, we conducted in-depth interviews with Turkish startups that were founded with the state’s ‘techno-entrepreneurship grant’ on the condition of conducting R&D. A common scheme emerging in all three cases was the presence of challenging and supporting stakeholders in the gestation stage. The predominant finding in the literature was the supportive role of the family; however we found a profoundly opposing role in one case. Secondly, the logic of the state’s techno-entrepreneurship fund monitoring staff seemed to be a vital factor in the sustainability of the startup. Finally, the ethical and passionate conduct of business by these startups could be a factor drawing third parties into becoming stakeholders. Based on these findings three propositions are stated to be studied in the future.

The chapter provides a general account of industry-university collaboration with successful results in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and e-Government area in Turkey. Presented mostly from the perspective of the industrial institution this successful case hopes to provide certain insights and suggestions for improving the strength and effectiveness of industry-university collaboration. A complementary cross-cultural knowledge management model is also proposed to contribute to the conceptual discussions on collaboration models and interface designs. Accordingly, the paper provides firstly information of the industrial institution and related electronic services and project work on the practice side, then the suggested conceptual framework, and finally gained insights and suggestions for the practice.

While regional innovation systems (RIS) saw a relative development in many European countries in recent years due to decentralisation policies, they are at an early stage in Turkey, a unitary state with a strong centralised system rooted in the administrative structures of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish region of Izmir was the first in the country to elaborate its own Regional Innovation Strategy in 2012 and achieved considerable improvements in its R&D and innovation capacity, based on the strategy’s recommendations. What are the key factors driving the transition from a nascent to a mature RIS, and how can the transition be further enhanced? This paper aims to answer these questions by examining the Izmir RIS from the fine-grained perspective of the Triple Helix Systems concept, which sees regional innovation as the result of the interplay between a Knowledge Space, an Innovation Space and a Consensus Space. The spaces co-evolve in a multitude of ways and directions as a non-linear process and provide a detailed view of regional actors, knowledge flows and interactions between them, and the resources available, in view of identifying existing blockages or gaps and formulating policy recommendations. The picture provided by the Triple Helix Spaces is complemented, for a more comprehensive approach, with insights drawn from three other RIS typologies based on integration into internal and external environments, regional barriers to innovation, and regional development stage. We conclude that the key factor driving these improvements was the presence of high-impact national and regional R&D, innovation and entrepreneurship policies that have been implemented in a relatively well-defined Triple Helix System. Izmir’s Triple Helix System features a more advanced Knowledge Space with a comprehensive, high-density institutional structure and a solid knowledge base, a younger but fast developing Innovation Space, with an increasing number of technology transfer offices, technoparks and innovation-support institutions, and a thinner, yet active Consensus Space promoting regional networking and collaborative leadership. For a successful transition to a mature RIS, policy and practice in the next stages need to focus on reducing fragmentation and strengthening the systemic linkages between the three Spaces.

Starting point of this paper is the Eastern enlargement of the EU and the economic advantages and disadvantages for the old and the new EU member states. It focuses on the impact of the enlargement on border regions, especially between Germany and Poland, and introduces into the EU support programs which aim to integrate regions on both sides of the border. The scientific cooperation is picked as an example of cross-border activities which had to be (re-)established after the system break. An empirical study on the example of Europa University Viadrina—a newly founded university in the German-Polish border region—shows the extent of German-Polish cooperation based on co-publication activity.

Open science represents a challenge to traditional modes of scientific practice and collaboration. Knowledge exchange is still heavily influenced by researchers ambition to publish in highly cited journals and within ‘closed partnerships’ (Holmes, Nature 533: 54, 2016) where interactions are based on patenting based on IPR. However, perceived inefficiencies, a desire to make publically funded research available to all and a crisis of confidence in the quality of research published in top journals all serve to fuel demands for more openness in the conduct of science and the exchange of scientific knowledge. Whilst there is a strong logic behind the contention that increased openness will promote efficiencies, quality and fairness, there is still considerable uncertainty about the impact on university/industry collaboration and the balance that needs to be struck between open and closed approaches. Policy obstacles are also likely to impede the pace of change.

The chapter provides a substantial overview of features and channels of knowledge and technology transfer in light of achieving impact from science and research. A taxonomy of transfer channels is proved and levels of impact from science and technology on innovation is proposed. It’s found that there are different levels of value generated from STI, each featuring different stakeholders with different agendas and expectations. The authors argue that to make knowledge and technology transfer impactful and sustainable a long term and holistic view and approach is required. Against most literature about technology and knowledge transfer this work presents an overarching overview of objects, channels and features of partners involved in transfer. It features technology and knowledge transfer from a holistic perspective and provides useful background for future empiric studies and impact assessments.

The chapter looks at universities in their relation to other entities in society. It proposes new metrics for gaining insight into these relationships. The possibilities for the reorganisation of the relationships between universities, industry and government so as to stimulate economic growth or innovation can themselves be classed as innovations. Whilst universities often are the locus of specific innovations, their broader discursive role provides a means of exploring contesting perspectives on innovation. In doing so, they can contribute to a broader public discourse where some innovations which were once seen to be controversial become normalised. The discourse dynamics illustrated by the Triple Helix allows for the description of this process as one where redundancies of expectation are produced not only within the transactional productions of the academy (i.e. academic papers) but also within the management of institutions surrounding education, including university management, academic quality agencies, institutional ranking organisations, academic journals, as well as other institutions which the university is associated with such as health or law.

Innovation has become a frequently quoted and lived central missions of universities. This book demonstrates however that the mission is not constant. New challenges and opportunities emerge at different moments in history and there are currently a number of important strategic orientations that universities need to consider and balance. Universities face the challenge to balance their different activities and missions in order to ensure sustainable impact on innovation ecosystems at different levels. The authors argue that entrepreneurial universities as we know them today will change their thinking and activities from being purely demonstrable impact driven towards an activity portfolio approach. The latter considers ongoing institutional and governance change paired with a selected number of activities which provide demonstrable and visible impact but also continuing to invest into the free mind blue sky driven work typical for such institutions. Even beyond this the entrepreneurial university features risk taking by means of a research and innovation friendly internal climate and organization which is driven by rigor but not administration and performance indicators.