Smart policy mixes for stimulating

university-based ecosystems: relevance & engagement in an age of excellence and uniqueness

Keynote presentation to

“University based entrepreneurship & regional

development”,

Pécs, Hungary 30th November 2017

Paul Benneworth, CHEPS, the Netherlands.

Acknowledgements

ICUBERD: Atilla et al

Sponsors of antecedent

research

Jos van den Broek, Lisa Nieth,

Martin Stienstra

EURASHE, ECIU, EuSPRI

Overview of presentation

Entrepreneurship and the emerging academic knowledge exploitation agenda

Academic entrepreneurship and the limitations of spin-off companies

Towards a broader perspective on university entrepreneurship activities

Towards a research agenda sensitive to university entrepreneurship in the round

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE

EMERGING ACADEMIC

KNOWLEDGE EXPLOITATION

AGENDA

Part 1

1. The rise of the science-based economy

“Advances in science when put to practical use mean more jobs, higher wages, shorter hours, more abundant crops, more leisure for recreation, for study, for learning how to live without the deadening drudgery which has been the burden of the common man for ages past. Advances in science will also bring higher standards of living, will lead to the prevention or cure of diseases, will promote conservation of our limited national resources, and will assure means of defense against aggression.

But to achieve these objectives - to secure a high level of employment, to maintain a position of world leadership - the flow of new scientific knowledge must be both continuous and substantial.”

(Bush, 1945, ch. 1)

2. Universities as a critical knowledge provider

Universities survived as an institution because they have always met societal needs

Universities today produce the building blocks of the knowledge economy, “knowledge capital”

Universities organise activities where society (firms, policy-makers, civil society) learn

Teaching

Research

Service

Facilities

Universities Society

3. The academic entrepreneurial process

Academic consultancy

policies/ careers

Technology transfer, Incubators/

science parks

Policy instruments for technology transfer e.g. innovation vouchers

CONTEXT

Opportunity

recognition

Knowledge

creation

(research)

Knowledge

capitalisation

(venturing)

Firm balance

sheet growth

Firm

absorptive

capacity

Market

demand

Strengthened

steering core

4. The anatomy of the ‘entrepreneurial university’

Extended

development

periphery

Stimulated

academic

heartland

Diversified

funding

sources

Intergrated

entrepreneurial

culture

After Clark, 1998

1. Entrepreneurship is university strategic

objective

2. EE seeks both to raise entrepreneurial

attitudes and drive economic growth

3. Clear incentives/ rewards for those

supporting graduate entrepreneurship

4. Recruitment practices incorporate

entrepreneurial/ support activities

5. The standard academic entrepreneurship story

Professor Desire Collins (KUL)’s

tpa patent made €1bn

Formation of Leuven R&D –

huge tpa patent income

LRD became best-practice,

patents/ spin-outs goal

◦ 95% of patents lose money,

◦ 90% of spin-offs fail

◦ 90% of survivors <10 employees

6. The policy discourse of academic

entrepreneurship

Line 1: Entrepreneurial Impact

Research IP Spin-off companySocial

benefit

Publication

Citations

ExcellenceLine 2: Excellence

Desire by policy makers to

make academic

entrepreneurship something

that happens automatically as

a result of excellent research

7. Why are we still talking about this?

“The problem of democratisation brings up the question of a university’s society function in the very broadest sense of the term. It includes not only the development of access to qualifications, but the production of knowledge and the social significance of that knowledge. It also involves a change in the sharing of responsibility for the development of knowledge and teaching…If the university is to be effectively integrated into the community, it must no longer concern only those who attend the university, namely the teachers and the students. It should be possible to pass on one’s skills without being a teacher and to receive training without being a student” (CERI, 1982, p. 13).

ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP

AND THE LIMITATIONS OF SPIN-

OFF COMPANIES

Part 1I

8. Entrepreneurship – a Schumpeterian

perspective

Joseph Schumpeter, 1883-1950

The Entrepreneur as an actor can perceive what others

cannot, a way to realise an improvement idea

Improvement ideas (‘innovations’) make things better/

make better things within existing constraints/ frontiers

Capitalism’s “creative destruction” continually creates

opportunities making all kinds of asset inexpensively

available (workers, machines, patents, sites)

Entrepreneur makes use of these latent assets via

creative new combinations “innovation”

8a. An entrepreneur ‘builds on the balance’

A Schumpeterian perspective is a good starting point for understanding how entrepreneurs create societal improvement

Entrepreneurs building various kinds of structures which through their function have a “capitalising” effect.

That “capital” provides capacity to do desirable things

9. University spin-offs ‘building on the balance’

Entrepreneur creates

opportunity exploitation

structure

Generalised knowledge

transformed into working

asset

‘Better mousetrap’ effect sees

premium price build growth

Investment/ growth create

regional benefits

10. Producing general societal benefits

Individual benefits

(firm growth)

Meso benefits

(regional growth)

Macro benefits

(GDP growth)

Research creates

useful knowledge

“Research benefits

private firms”

“Research drives

local development”

“Research benefits

all society”

11. Why don’t spin-offs solve society’s problems?

Bozeman (2002): public value failure

(alternative to ‘market failure’):

1) No mechanisms to articulate public value

(2) “imperfect monopolies” occur;

(3) benefit hoarding occurs;

(4) scarcity of providers of public value;

(5) short termism

(6) Competition >> public services

(7) market transactions threaten

fundamental human subsistence.

In cases of public value failure:

Solutions must emerge outside formal

market governance frameworks to

challenge existing incumbents

e.g. HIV drug patents.

12. The normative model of the entrepreneurial

university

From technology transfer meta-theory

To an appealing/ popular policy concept

“Universities

can do this”

“Universities

should do

this”

“Universities

are about only

this”

13. The category error of the entrepreneurial

universityMy contention: the reason that we are no closer – 35 years after CERI and 20 years after Burton Clark – to understanding what it means to be an “entrepreneurial university” is that we are making a category error,

we are fixating on the company and not what really matters –universities building structures that allow their knowledge to drive societal capitalisation

TOWARDS A BROADER

PERSPECTIVE ON UNIVERSITY

ENTREPRENEURSHIP ACTIVITIES

Part 1II

14. What kinds of capitalization systems can

university entrepreneurs develop? Starting heuristic: universities

can build systems whose functioning drives ‘social capitalisation’ effect

‘Capital’ allows more people to do more of the good things they like in life

Puttnam’s Social Capital: organisation allows other systems to be controlled & directed

15. Universities benefit from these activities

University

Academic

leaders

Admin &

services

Academic

teachers

Postdocs

Ph.D.s

Post-grad

students

Undergrad

students

Department

Academic

teachers

Postdocs

Ph.D.s

Post-grad

students

Undergrad

students

Department

Degree courses

Research projects

Placements

Society

Firms

Policy-

makers

NGOs

Civil

Society

Degree courses

Research projects

Placements

Hosting placements

Funding consultancy

Guest Lectures

Guest researchers

Seminar speakers

Fieldtrips

Career Fairs

‘Living Laboratories’

Giving interviews

16. Universities are loosely coupled communities

Some tasks need central co-ordination

Knowledge processes don’t follow identical paths

Can’t impose single approach (tight coupling) on diverse paths

University have to co-ordinate sufficiently respecting diversity

‘Loose coupling’

17. Academic entrepreneurs reconfiguring

knowledge communities to capitalize in society University entrepreneurs are

building structures and systems

that support knowledge activities,

through those knowledge activities capitalise on the balance,

In terms of the ‘multiple bottom line’, (“profit, people, planet, place”)

18. The narrowing gaze of technological

entrepreneurship

Universities have become

‘strategic entities’

Priorities made following

management knowledge

Academic entrepreneurship

mutually beneficial (social

compact, income generation)

Strong institutional research

push for venture formation

Focus on TBE

19. Towards a broader definition of ‘academic

entrepreneurship’ The risk of focusing on how

universities can create technologies that can benefit society

Rather than understanding universities’ potential to help new knowledge solve societal problems

Thereby risk losing academic capacity within e’ship studies to talk about what really matters in university knowledge and society.

The baseline for what it means to be an entrepreneurial can be shifted away

From a university that is good at taking generic knowledge created in global communities, privatising it and then creating growth businesses,

To a university that is good at taking generic knowledge and creating localised structures that in turn have more control over their own situations.

FIRST REFLECTIONS ON BUILDING

A RESEARCH AGENDA SENSITIVE

TO BROAD VARIANT ACADEMIC

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Part 1V

20. Academic entrepreneurship – a

Schumpeterian perspective (2)

The ‘academic’ entrepreneur realises latent value dormant

within formalised (scholarly) knowledge

Translation of knowledge to non-scholarly domain to where

they have a use value for others

Academic entrepreneur combines latent scholarly assets

creatively with other assets “academic innovation”

May be commercial, but growing emphasis on other domains:

• public sector innovation (govt)

• green innovation (environmental)

• social innovation (with community sector)

21. Potential areas for academic

entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship: the

Georgetown Masters

programme

Arts & Humanities-based

entrepreneurship: the case of

Manels

Democratic e’ship:

community-based research

activities

Environmental E’ship:

developing new forms of

collective land ownership

Public Sector E’ship: Tampere’s

Universities and its path-

shifting activities

Making universities more

entrepreneurial: the case of

the UT

22. Steering that through HEI structures

a) the strategic role played by the central steering core, in articulating a shared vision and strategic platform for engagement;

b) a supportive administrative apparatus, ensuring institutionalization of rules and procedures as well as support/incentive structures across the board;

c) commitment of key individuals across the academic heartland, recognizing new external opportunities and directly engaging with external parties; and

d) the degree of coupling between core and peripheral structures and activities, ensuring spill-over effects and mutually reinforcing synergies

Steering Core

(UAS Leadership)

Academic Heartland

(Departments, Centers, etc.)

Administrative Machinery

(Rules, procedures, incentives, etc.)

Internal Coupling

(Coordination & Linkages)

Mission, Functions, Structures &

Activities

University

management

23. Entrepreneurial activities becoming

peripheral to universities

Support staff &

project

management

Academics

Pressures/ ‘Scholarly Drift’

World-class status & ranking

Research-led profile & evaluation

Maximising publication outputs

Focus on

research

outputs

(abstract-

general)

Entrepreneurship

(specific-useful)

forced to periphery

1. Entrepreneurship is university strategic

objective

2. EE seeks both to raise entrepreneurial

attitudes and drive economic growth

3. Clear incentives/ rewards for those

supporting graduate entrepreneurship

4. Recruitment practices incorporate

entrepreneurial/ support activities

?

24. Towards a future research agenda for

academic entrepreneurship How can we better understand,

conceptualise and manage the entrepreneurial processes by which orchestrate the combination of different kinds of knowledge resources situated within distinct territorial structures?

these divergent system logics of knowledge production within which entrepreneurs operate,

how they produce emergent regional knowledge architectures through networks and coalitions of entrepreneurs, and

how policy-makers can optimise engagement to support both private benefits and create collective/ public knowledge assets.

25. The persistant importance of the

entrepreneurial system How can we apply the key

elements of academic entrepreneurship studies to these new domains?

How can we exploit studies in these new domains to enrich TBE disciplinary core?

How can we enrich understanding of e.g. knowledge fixation with novel domains?

What motivates (social) entrepreneurs?

How can we upscale (environmentally) useful innovations?

How can we exercise (democratic) control over new technological avenues?

How do entrepreneurs deal with symbolic/ cultural value?