Governance of entrepreneurial universities in the context of entrepreneurial ecosystems: the perspective of the university technology transfer offices.

Abstract

Governance of universities toward the entrepreneurial university and the link with the organizational role of University Technology Transfer Offices (UTTOs) are studied. A double novel approach is adopted: first, analyzing the visibility of the entrepreneurial strategy followed by the different universities in the system, with a Web Content Analysis of all Spanish universities (seventy-six), and extracting data from official reports; second, with a survey to UTTOs managers (sixteen valid answers). Key aspects of entrepreneurial universities, such as their organizational structure, links between entrepreneurship and research, entrepreneurship education, and the relationships with the ecosystem were analyzed. In addition, the views of UTTOs’ managers about the implementation of the entrepreneurial university in their own institution were studied. As a result, it emerges how the entrepreneurial university strategy is made visible in specific actions such as transversal initiatives, awards to entrepreneurship and initial support. In addition, it has been found that UTTOs managers think that the impact of the entrepreneurial university should be further assessed in order to know the real results of the implementation of such strategy.