Abstract
Universities are engines of the knowledge-based economy, both as sites of knowledge production and exploitation. Over the past two decades a “Third Mission” for universities has been articulated, alongside teaching and research; and this third mission is understood as commercial engagement. While growing literatures on the entrepreneurial university and university entrepreneurship have emerged, they are broadly conceptualized and overly fragmented. In this article we advance the concept of entrepreneurial architecture as an analytical framework to understand the organizational dynamics of the contemporary university and fuse two dominant discourses on the entrepreneurial evolution of higher education. We offer a pragmatic approach for institutions to respond to the challenges of the Third Mission.
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Notes
The term ‘Third Mission’ is predominantly used in an Anglo-European context to refer to the socio-economic role of universities. In the U.S. the third mission of the university, after teaching and research, is regarded to be service provision (MacLabhrainn 2004) while the fourth mission, stemming from the Bayh-Dole’s, emphasises realising maximum socio-economic benefit from government-funded research (Henderson and Smith 2002). While the missions do not map directly, the Anglo-European interpretation of the Third Mission can be seen to include those activities classified under the third and fourth mission in US universities. The remainder of this discussion is framed in a U.K. context, and the term Third Mission used to identify their socio-economic role.
This research project, entitled Entrepreneurial Architectures: Reconceptualising Higher Education’s New Mission in Europe, was funded through a British Academy Small Research Grant, and it is scheduled to be completed in June 2010.
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Jen Nelles
received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She is a post-doctoral fellow associated with the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN) at the University of Toronto and the Centre d’Etudes de Populations, de Pauverté et de Politique socio-économiques/International Networks for Studies in Technology, Environment, Alternatives, Development (CEPS/INSTEAD) in Luxembourg. Her research interests include the changing role of universities in national and regional economies and the economic development and governance of city-regions.
Tim Vorley
is a University Lecturer and Fellow of Churchill College in geography at the University of Cambridge. His current research interests focus on entrepreneurship and higher education, specifically how the entrepreneurial turn has affected the organizational dynamics of universities in Europe. Tim holds a Ph.D. from the University of Leicester.
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Nelles, J., Vorley, T. Constructing an Entrepreneurial Architecture: An Emergent Framework for Studying the Contemporary University Beyond the Entrepreneurial Turn. Innov High Educ 35, 161–176 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-009-9130-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-009-9130-3