Success factors for managing an entrepreneurial university : developing an integrative framework

Abstract

The entrepreneurial university is regarded as an agent of societal change and an important instrument in the facilitation of the contemporary knowledge-based economy because it supports the generation and exploitation of knowledge through its three missions of education, research and academic entrepreneurship. Moreover, the entrepreneurial university boosts economic and social development by encouraging academic entrepreneurship among faculty members. Although research on the entrepreneurial university has increased considerably in recent years, there are as yet no conceptual syntheses of the literature and there is an absence of a holistic framework covering the range of factors required to promote academic entrepreneurship within the entrepreneurial university paradigm. This gap is addressed by identifying the determining factors in an entrepreneurial university and synthesizing them into an integrative framework, based on the corporate entrepreneurship research stream: the determining factors are divided into three groups – external, internal and strategic. This framework is based on a qualitative review of theoretical and empirical studies of entrepreneurial universities and an analysis of diverse frameworks and models. The paper thus provides a systematic overview that allows for consolidation of the literature on entrepreneurial universities, while drawing important implications from research and suggesting potential paths for future study.