Universities, Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, and Sustainability

Cristina Fernandes, Marcela Ramírez-Pasillas, João J. Ferreira, Cristina Fernandes, Marcela Ramírez-Pasillas, João J. Ferreira

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110670288
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Wissenskapital

This volume presents theoretical and empirical research on universities and their entrepreneurial ecosystems to better grasp the connections between universities and their surrounding environments and their engagement with sustainability. The book provides a better understanding of the entrepreneurial characteristics of universities. It examines the ways in which universities' collaboration and participation in an ecosystem support business and industry transformation. It also investigates how universities function within the university/industry/government/third sector relationship nexus. The book enables the systematisation of the literature while simultaneously builds theory, empirically testing existing theories, and contributes towards a future research agenda geared towards sustainability. The book gathers contributions from varied geographical contexts providing an international perspective.

Part I: Universities and entrepreneurial ecosystems

Chapter 1 Entrepreneurial ecosystems, learning regions, and the role of universities

Elisa Thomas

Bjørn Asheim

1.1 Introduction

This chapter aims at discussing the role of universities in establishing entrepreneurial ecosystems, especially in terms of how learning regions, understood as development coalitions, can be used in the formation process. An entrepreneurial ecosystem, by generating value and distributing it among the members of the ecosystem, can create sustainable economic, technological, and societal impacts (Audretsch, Cunningham, Kuratko, Lehmann & Menter, 2019). To develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem, the concept of “learning region” contributes by pointing to the establishment of a strategy for long-term, bottom-up, and broad partnership-based development coalitions (Asheim, 2012). A learning region emphasizes cooperation and collective learning in regional networks resulting in the promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation, and, as a consequence, the creation of sustainable businesses (Asheim, 2012).

Universities as knowledge generating institutions have the potential of going beyond traditional support for entrepreneurship, focused mainly on the creation of academic spin-offs or licensing activities, towards promoting regional cultural change and network building activities (Pugh, Soetanto, Jack & Hamilton, 2019). That broadens the understanding of university engagement in a developmental role, which is based on the medium to long-term alignment of university capabilities with the needs of local actors (Marques, Morgan, Healy & Vallance, 2019). However, little is known of universities as the main drivers of the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, especially in the context of emerging economies. This chapter will, therefore, fill this lacuna by analysing the role of universities in creating entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging economies by exploiting learning regions as development coalitions. To answer this, we look into a case study of three universities in Southern Brazil that, by forming an alliance, decided to act towards the creation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem to contribute to promoting sustainable new and existing businesses. Specifically, we explore how the alliance of universities worked to establish a bottom-up, horizontally based cooperation between different actors, including the activities performed by universities’ leaders to mobilize regional stakeholders in the development of the ecosystem.

1.2 Universities, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and learning regions: Theoretical perspectives

There are studies about universities and entrepreneurial ecosystems which look at universities mostly as institutions with a supporting role as knowledge and human resources generators. A bibliometric review by Malecki (2018) shows that universities are the most frequently identified actor in entrepreneurial ecosystems after entrepreneurs but, as a matter of fact, the most important function of a university is still to provide highly skilled and specialized talents. Ierapetritis (2019), for instance, analyses the role of Greek universities in fostering entrepreneurial ecosystems, emphasizing their actions with the academic community as business incubation and education, guidance and counselling on entrepreneurship and innovation. Pugh et al. (2019) show that the university of Lancaster, in the UK, has taken a role of facilitating learning activities not only at the individual entrepreneurial level but also at the wider regional level, helping the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Shaw and Allison (1999) go a little further and include the university’s contribution to regional governance by its involvement in local regional and strategic planning processes. Their focus in Australia is on universities’ contribution to regional development, by strategically positioning the region as a learning region in the knowledge economy. Some universities “act not only as educators but also as institutional entrepreneurs, proactively networking, shaping regional strategies and attempting to change local routines as well as national policies” (Raagmaa & Keerberg, 2017, p. 270).

The ecosystem concept has become increasingly popular the last years, but often it has been used without any clear ideas of what it actually means. It is also often used interchangeable with regional innovation systems (RIS), and although there are similarities between these two concepts, they are different in many aspects. A RIS is constituted by two sub-systems, an exploration sub-system of knowledge generating and diffusing organizations such as universities, research organizations and technology transfer agencies, and an exploitation sub-systems of firms, often located in (regional) clusters, surrounded by an organizational and institutional support structure. A variant of the RIS concept is the triple helix construct (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1997), where the public sector adds to universities and industries on the same level as a key actor of the regional set-up, while the public sector in the RIS context is part of the organizational and institutional support structure. Both frameworks are most often a result of top-down planning initiatives as part of a public regional innovation policy, even if there are examples of organic developments of RIS, especially in regions with a long industrial tradition. Consequently, most examples of well-functioning RIS can be found in well-developed countries and regions with good governance and strong institutions, where trust and social capital provide the glue for a tradition of close public-private collaboration.

Ecosystems on the other hand are most often developed organically driven by innovative entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, as most typically seen in Silicon Valley and US science parks such as the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. In addition to these two actors, universities, often with an explicit vision of becoming entrepreneurial universities with a strong focus on the commercialisation of research through IP rights is a third active organization of the ecosystem. In contrast, the role of universities in a RIS is broader than just commercialization of research, and contains also university–industry cooperation in general, as well as more specifically a mode 2 oriented research cooperation between universities and industries which often involves industrial doctorates and adjunct professors paid by industry (Trippl, Sinozic & Lawton Smith, 2015). Industry more generally is also...